The Actor Ichikawa Danjuro V as Benkei in the Play Dai Danna Kanjincho, Performed at the Kawarazaki Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1790

Benkei, the warrior-monk and most loyal of Yoshitsune's retainers, was the signature role of multiple generations of the Ichikawa Danjūrō line, and any Danjūrō Benkei print belongs to the central iconography of Edo kabuki. This hosoban print in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated to about 1790, shows Ichikawa Danjūrō V as Benkei in the eleventh-month Kawarazaki Theater production of Dai Danna Kanjinchō, a precursor of the play that would later become the canonical Kanjinchō. Kanjinchō stages the moment at the Ataka Barrier when Benkei, disguised as a yamabushi monk, reads aloud from a blank scroll to fool the barrier-keeper into letting the disguised Yoshitsune party pass. Shun'ei renders Danjūrō V in the unmistakable Benkei iconography — broad shoulders, fierce gaze, ritually charged posture — and the print serves as both production document and tribute to one of the most enduring star-role pairings in Edo theater. The Kawarazaki Theater (a renaming of the Kiri) was one of the three great licensed houses, and prints from its productions formed a substantial part of the late-1780s and 1790s Edo market.