Actor Asao Tamejûrô I as Drunken Gotôbei Doing a Sambasô Dance in “Yoshitsune’s Koshigoe Petition” (“Yoshitsune Koshigoe jô”)

This [hosoban](/glossary/hosoban) print in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated to about 1790, shows the actor Asao Tamejūrō I as the drunken character Gotōbei performing a sambasō dance in Yoshitsune Koshigoe Jō (Yoshitsune's Koshigoe Petition). The play draws on the famous episode in which Minamoto no Yoshitsune, in disgrace with his brother Yoritomo, drafts a petition seeking reconciliation while encamped at Koshigoe; comic and lyrical interludes — like Gotōbei's drunken sambasō — provided contrast to the political and emotional weight of the main plot. The sambasō is one of kabuki's classical dance forms, originally a ritual celebratory dance, and its drunken inflection here would have been a moment of comic virtuosity. Shun'ei captures the actor mid-step with the kind of dynamic posture that distinguishes the school's mature work; the figure is unmistakably engaged in dance rather than static portraiture. The print preserves both Tamejūrō's specific stage presence and the broader role of dance interludes within late-eighteenth-century kabuki performance.