Actor Ichikawa Yaozō II as Sakuramaru

Dated 1776 and held by the Cleveland Museum of Art, this Katsukawa Shunkō print depicts the actor Ichikawa Yaozō II as Sakuramaru. Sakuramaru is one of the three triplet-brother characters at the heart of Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami (Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy), one of the great masterpieces of kabuki and the bunraku puppet theater. First performed in 1746 and continually revived, the play centers on three brothers — Matsuōmaru, Umeōmaru, and Sakuramaru — whose loyalties to opposing political factions tear them apart. Sakuramaru is the most tragic of the three, whose role culminates in an act of suicide that is one of the most emotionally wrenching scenes in the kabuki repertoire. Ichikawa Yaozō II's performance of the role would have been a significant theatrical event, and Shunkō's print preserves both the actor's likeness and the role-specific costuming (typically featuring cherry-blossom motifs that reference Sakuramaru's name). The 1776 date places this work in Shunkō's early independent period, when he was beginning to establish a distinctive voice within the Katsukawa school. The Cleveland Museum of Art's example is part of a remarkable collection of dated, role-identified Katsukawa prints that constitute one of the major resources for the study of late-eighteenth-century kabuki history.