Actor Nakayama Tomisaburô as a Shirabyôshi Dancer in “The Maiden at Dôjô Temple” (“Musume Dôjô-ji”)

Katsukawa Shunei portrays the onnagata Nakayama Tomisaburo as a shirabyoshi dancer in Musume Dojoji, The Maiden at Dojo Temple, one of the most celebrated dance pieces of the kabuki repertory. Derived from the noh play Dojoji, the kabuki version turns the legend of the woman who transforms into a serpent for love into a virtuoso showcase for a female-role specialist, demanding rapid costume changes and dramatic shifts of mood across a single extended dance. Shunei catches Nakayama Tomisaburo in the elegant white-and-red attire of the opening shirabyoshi, the slim figure framed by long sleeves and the characteristic court fan, the face given the individualized likeness that distinguished Katsukawa school kabuki actor prints. As Katsukawa Shunsho's senior pupil, Shunei was a primary documentarian of late-eighteenth-century Edo yakusha-e, and his sheets of dance roles supplement the more numerous straight-narrative portraits in his oeuvre. Dance prints required particular attention to gesture and the swing of fabric, since the dance itself, not the play's plot, was what audiences carried home. The print served simultaneously as advertising for an ongoing run and as a permanent record of an actor's interpretation of a canonical part. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this impression among its extensive Katsukawa-school holdings, where it can be compared with Shunsho's and Shun'ei's own treatments of Musume Dojoji across successive performances.