The Actor Matsumoto Koshiro IV as Hatakeyama Shigetada Disguised as Honjo Soheiji (?) in the Play Edo no Fuji Wakayagi Soga (?), Performed at the Nakamura Theater (?) in the First Month, 1789 (?)

Matsumoto Kōshirō IV was one of the great tachiyaku (male leading actors) of late-eighteenth-century kabuki, and this hosoban print in the Art Institute of Chicago, from a multi-sheet composition and dated to about 1789, shows him as the historical warrior Hatakeyama Shigetada disguised as the contemporary commoner Honjō Sōheiji, in the first-month Nakamura Theater production of Edo no Fuji Wakayagi Soga. Disguise plots — in which historical figures appear in contemporary garb under assumed identities — were a kabuki convention, allowing playwrights to map medieval heroism onto Edo urban life. Shun'ei's portrait gives the actor the firm Katsukawa outlining suited to a male warrior role, while the contemporary costume signals the disguise layer of the plot. The print's identification as one sheet of a multi-sheet composition suggests it was originally part of a larger tableau showing the cast assembled for a key scene; the surviving sheet alone documents Kōshirō IV in a characteristic pose from a specific Edo kabuki season.