The Actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Hiranoya Tokubei (?) in the Play Waka Murasaki Edokko Soga (?), Performed at the Ichimura Theater (?) in the Third Month, 1792 (?)

Katsukawa Shunei depicts Ichikawa Monnosuke II in the role of the townsman Hiranoya Tokubei from a 1792 production of Waka Murasaki Edokko Soga at the Ichimura Theater, one of the great Edo licensed kabuki houses. The Soga vendetta cycle, of which this play is a variant, was the perennial spring fixture of the Edo stage, and townsman supporting roles like Tokubei allowed actors to play with contemporary urban manners against the heroic backdrop of the Soga brothers' revenge. Monnosuke II is rendered with the soft yet distinct features the Katsukawa school reserved for refined male-lead types, the costume's stripes and crests drawn with the firm linear precision that distinguished Katsukawa actor prints. As the foremost pupil of Katsukawa Shunsho, Shunei was instrumental in carrying the school's signature approach to Edo yakusha-e into the 1790s. He continued to insist on individualized actor likeness even as rival schools, particularly the emerging Utagawa, began to crowd the market. The print functioned both as advertising for the run and as a collectible portrait that fans could carry home from the theater quarter. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this impression among an extensive run of Shunei's Soga-cycle kabuki actor prints, where its iconography can be set against the artist's other treatments of Ichikawa Monnosuke II in successive seasons of his career.