Actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Mori no Rammaru in “Muromacho Chronicle in Kana Script” (“Kanagaki Muromachi bundan”)

Katsukawa Shunei's print of Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Mori no Rammaru forms part of the artist's coordinated suite of single-figure portraits documenting the cast of Kanagaki Muromachi Bundan, the Muromacho Chronicle in Kana Script. Rammaru, the loyal young retainer of Oda Nobunaga who perished at Honnoji, was a classic wakashugata role demanding a youthful, slightly androgynous beauty, and Ichikawa Monnosuke II was one of the actors most associated with this kind of part in late eighteenth-century Edo. Shunei renders him with the soft, oval-faced characterization the Katsukawa school used for younger male roles, balanced against the crisp pattern of court-warrior costume. As a senior pupil of Katsukawa Shunsho, Shunei was at the center of the workshop that had reshaped Edo yakusha-e by replacing generic stage types with individualized actor likenesses, and his sheets from this Kanagaki Muromachi Bundan series typify the Katsukawa school's strategy of selling kabuki actor prints as a collectible ensemble. Each design references both the performer's persona and the specific role, doubling as advertising and aide-memoire for the play. The print's clean, broadly massed composition reflects Shunei's mature style of the late 1780s, just before he moved toward the bolder large-head close-up portraits that mark the high point of his career. This impression is held by the Art Institute of Chicago, where it can be studied beside its companion sheets from the same production.