The Actor Iwai Hanshiro IV as Okumi of the Mieido Fan Shop (?) in the Play Sanjuk-koku Yobune no Hajimari (?), Performed at the Ichimura Theater (?) in the Fifth Month, 1789 (?)

This [hosoban](/glossary/hosoban) print in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated to about 1789, shows Iwai Hanshirō IV in the role of Okumi, a shop girl from the Mieidō fan shop, in the fifth-month Ichimura Theater production of Sanjuk-koku Yobune no Hajimari. Roles set in the contemporary world of Edo merchants and townspeople — the so-called sewa-mono plays — offered onnagata the chance to render finely observed, often emotionally fraught domestic situations, and Okumi is the kind of plebeian female figure whose tragedy or romance could carry an entire production. Shun'ei depicts Hanshirō with the slightly elongated facial features that distinguish this actor's particular nigao-e treatment, the figure positioned with the casual grace appropriate to a shop girl rather than a court lady. The print is also notable as a record of a specific shop name — the Mieidō was an actual Edo fan shop, and its appearance in a kabuki plot reflects the play's grounding in recognizable urban geography.