The Actor Iwai Hanshiro IV as Yaegushi no Oroku (?) in the Play Keisei Kogane no Hakarime (?), Performed at the Kawarazaki Theater (?) in the Third Month, 1792 (?)

Katsukawa Shunei's portrait of the female-role specialist Iwai Hanshiro IV as Yaegushi no Oroku is a refined example of the Edo [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) tradition that the Katsukawa school dominated in the late eighteenth century. The actor, shown in the Kawarazaki Theater's third-month 1792 production of Keisei Kogane no Hakarime, is depicted in the elegant, slightly mannered posture characteristic of the onnagata role-type. Shunei renders the swelling curves of the elaborate kimono and the delicate tilt of the head with the sharp, individualized facial characterization that distinguished Katsukawa actor prints from the more generic figures of earlier Torii-school designs. Iwai Hanshiro IV was among the most celebrated onnagata of the Tenmei and Kansei eras, and Shunei drew him repeatedly across his career, building a visual record of one of the great female impersonators of the Edo stage. As the senior pupil of Katsukawa Shunsho, Shunei inherited the workshop's emphasis on capturing not merely costume and pose but the specific likeness, gesture, and stage presence of named actors performing identifiable roles. The yakusha-e genre served as both publicity for current productions and a souvenir for kabuki devotees, and prints like this circulated rapidly through Edo's bookshops in the days following a premiere. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression as part of its extensive holdings of Katsukawa-school theatrical prints, where it documents a now-vanished performance while testifying to Shunei's mature command of the onnagata image at the threshold of his most productive decade.