The Actor Yamashita Kinsaku II as Okaya in the Play Yomogi Fuku Noki no Tamamizu, Performed at the Kiri Theater in the Fifth Month, 1795

Katsukawa Shunei's portrait of the actor Yamashita Kinsaku II as Okaya in the play Yomogi Fuku Noki no Tamamizu, performed at the Kiri Theater in the fifth month of 1795, documents a specific production from one of the most active seasons in Edo kabuki. The Kiri Theater, a substitute venue used when the Nakamura-za was temporarily closed, hosted a range of new productions during this period, and prints like this served as both record and promotion. Yamashita Kinsaku II appears in the female role of Okaya, with Shunei drawing the actor's features in a manner consistent with the Katsukawa school's commitment to identifiable likeness within [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e). The composition concentrates on the upper body, where face and collar align to give viewers the same close encounter with the actor's stage presence that audiences would have sought from front-row seats. As a senior figure of the Katsukawa school, Shunei was by 1795 producing yakusha-e in close synchronicity with the Edo kabuki calendar, helping his publishers respond rapidly to the casting changes that drove theater-going in the licensed quarter. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the sheet and documents it at https://www.artic.edu/artworks/22240, where it preserves a record of Edo's mid-1790s theatrical life.