The Actor Onoe Kikugoro I holding a puppet of the Actor Sanogawa Ichimatsu I

Recorded by the Art Institute of Chicago as a hand-colored woodblock print in vertical oban diptych format and sumizuri-e classification dated to the 1740s, this image stages a meta-theatrical encounter between two of the great kabuki stars of Ishikawa Toyonobu's day. Onoe Kikugoro I, an onnagata of formidable presence, holds a puppet representing Sanogawa Ichimatsu I, the other leading female-role specialist of the era. The composition compresses an entire history of cross-influence and rivalry between the two actors into a single emblematic image: one actor literally holds the other in his hand, and the puppet form transforms living celebrity into reproducible icon. The vertical oban diptych, two sheets printed and read together, allowed Toyonobu the height he needed to give both figures full presence while reserving the upper portion for the puppet's separate display. Sumizuri-e classification indicates that the sheet was printed in black only, with any color added by hand, a mode that emphasized the calligraphic strength of Toyonobu's line. The print is essential to the iconography of Edo kabuki cross-gender performance and to the documentation of celebrity culture in eighteenth-century Japan.