The Actor Ichikawa Komazo II as Ono Sadakuro in the Play Chuko Ryogoku Ori, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the Seventh Month, 1790

Ono Sadakurō, the cold-blooded villain of Chūshingura who murders the unfortunate Yoichibei for a purse of gold, was one of kabuki's signature antagonist roles, and any actor who played him needed to register a particular kind of refined menace. This hosoban print in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated to about 1790, shows Ichikawa Komazō II as Sadakurō in the seventh-month Nakamura Theater production of Chūkō Ryōgoku Ori. Shun'ei renders the actor with the sharp jaw line and unsettlingly composed gaze appropriate to the role; Sadakurō, unlike many villains, is not blustering or grotesque but unnervingly self-possessed, and the print captures that calm cruelty in concentrated form. Komazō II's career placed him at the forefront of the same generation of Edo male leads as Danjūrō V and Matsumoto Kōshirō IV, and Shun'ei's hosoban portraits of him are among the more incisive Katsukawa-school documents of late-1780s and 1790s casting.