The Actor Yamashita Kinsaku II as Nijo no Kisaki (?) in the Play Natsu Matsuri Naniwa Kagami (?), Performed at the Morita Theater (?) in the Seventh Month, 1770 (?)

In this hosoban print, Ippitsusai Buncho portrays the Edo kabuki actor Yamashita Kinsaku II in a female role identified tentatively as Nijo no Kisaki, in a production that the Art Institute of Chicago associates with the Morita Theater in the seventh month of 1770. The play, also recorded with some uncertainty as Natsu Matsuri Naniwa Kagami, draws on a body of theatrical material set against Osaka summer festivals, here adapted for the Edo stage. Yamashita Kinsaku II was a leading onnagata of his generation, specializing in female roles, and Buncho's image makes the elaborately layered kimono, sash, and hair ornaments central to the composition. The hosoban format, slightly more than thirty centimeters in height and roughly fifteen in width, was the standard sheet size for Buncho's yakusha-e and gave him a tall, narrow field in which to place a single standing figure. Buncho is one of the most important Edo ukiyo-e designers of the period roughly bounded by 1765 and 1772, when actor prints were transforming from the generic to the individualized; together with Katsukawa Shunsho, with whom he collaborated on the book Ehon butai ogi, he is credited with leading that change. The Art Institute of Chicago's documentation notes residual uncertainties in role, play, theater, and date for this sheet, a reminder of the careful textual reconstruction required to read mid-Edo kabuki actor prints today.