Sanogawa Ichimatsu I as a puppeteer

This Art Institute of Chicago color woodblock print, classified as a [chuban](/glossary/chuban) benizuri-e dated to around 1749 and identified as the left half of a horizontal [oban](/glossary/oban), depicts the kabuki actor Sanogawa Ichimatsu I in the role of a puppeteer. The puppeteer subject allowed Ishikawa Toyonobu to stage a doubled performance, with the actor performing the role of a performer who in turn animates a puppet figure, and the sheet belongs to a broader interest in puppetry that Toyonobu pursued in several of his triptychs and pairs. Chuban indicates the medium-sized print format roughly twenty-six by nineteen centimeters, here understood as the left half of a horizontal oban sheet that originally would have continued to the right. Benizuri-e classification confirms the use of two or three printed color blocks supplying rose pink and grass green over the black-line printing. Ichimatsu, the great onnagata whose checkered kimono pattern entered the language as the word for the checkerboard motif, was the central celebrity figure of mid-Edo kabuki and the most repeatedly portrayed actor in Toyonobu's oeuvre. The Art Institute holding is an important document both of the chuban benizuri-e format and of the puppetry theme in Toyonobu's actor portraiture.