The Actor Segawa Kikunojo III as Chokichi in the Play Suda no Haru Geisha Katagi, Performed at the Kiri Theater in the First Month, 1796

Katsukawa Shunei's portrait of the actor Segawa Kikunojo III as Chokichi in the play Suda no Haru Geisha Katagi, performed at the Kiri Theater in the first month of 1796, captures one of the most celebrated onnagata performers of the era in a New Year role. Segawa Kikunojo III had inherited a famous acting name and built upon it through the 1780s and 1790s, becoming a figure whose appearances were anticipated as defining events of the Edo kabuki season. The role of Chokichi within the New Year programme would have been received as part of a cluster of related theatrical offerings, and Shunei's print speaks directly to that audience. Working within the Katsukawa school's yakusha-e tradition, Shunei renders the actor's face with attention to the individual features that distinguished Kikunojo's onnagata performance, surrounding the head with patterned kimono drawn in the disciplined linework characteristic of late eighteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e. The print exemplifies how Shunei kept Katsukawa school production aligned with each kabuki season, supporting the school's reputation through the years immediately before Sharaku's brief intervention into yakusha-e. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the sheet and documents it at https://www.artic.edu/artworks/22260.