The Actor Segawa Kikunojo II as the Heron Maiden in the play "Cotton Wadding of Izu Protecting the Matrimonial Chrysanthemums (Myoto-giku Izu no Kisewata)," performed at the Ichimura Theater from the first day of the eleventh month, 1770

Ippitsusai Buncho's hosoban print, in the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts the great onnagata Segawa Kikunojo II as the Heron Maiden in the play Myoto-giku Izu no Kisewata, translated by the museum as Cotton Wadding of Izu Protecting the Matrimonial Chrysanthemums. The production was performed at the Ichimura Theater beginning on the first day of the eleventh month of 1770, in the kaomise season. The Heron Maiden, sagi musume, is one of the most celebrated dance roles in Edo kabuki, in which an onnagata transforms through layers of costume and gesture between the spirit of a heron and a young woman in seasonally appropriate kimono. The role offered an extraordinary opportunity for visual display, and Segawa Kikunojo II's interpretation became a benchmark performance of the period. Buncho's design takes advantage of the tall, narrow hosoban format to set the figure's full standing pose at the center of the sheet, with the elaborate patterned costume and headdress carrying both the suggestion of the heron spirit and the elegance of the woman. The print is one of the canonical Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e of the late 1760s and early 1770s and shows Buncho at the height of his powers as a designer of kabuki actor prints. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression supports continuing scholarship on this celebrated production.