Katsukawa Shunsho here groups three of Edo's leading male actors in roles from Hatsumombi Kuruwa Soga (A Soga Drama on the First Festival Day in the Pleasure District): Ichikawa Danjuro V as Gokuin Sen'emon, Bando Mitsugoro I as An no Heibei, and Nakamura Sukegoro II as Kaminari Shokuro. The Art Institute of Chicago impression captures a moment from the gonin-otoko (five chivalrous commoners) interlude, a celebrated kabuki convention in which a group of swaggering townsmen take turns boasting through stylized name-recitation speeches. Each actor's costume bears the bold patterning and crests that distinguished his character, and Shunsho's drawing individualizes the faces so that each figure remains recognizable across the unified composition. As a record of late-eighteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e theatrical practice, the print is doubly valuable: it documents both the specific production at the Nakamura Theater and the gonin-otoko convention itself, which would continue to shape kabuki performance for generations. The Katsukawa school's mastery of group yakusha-e, in which individual portrait fidelity is preserved within larger compositional unity, set the standard that later actor-print artists, including the studio's own Shunko and Shun'ei, would carry forward into the early nineteenth century.
c. 1772
Color woodblock print; aiban
c. early 1780s
color woodblock print
c. 1768
Color woodblock print; hosoban
Actors Ichikawa Danjôrô V as Gokuin Sen’emon, Bandô Mitsugorô I as An no Heibei, and Nakamura Sukegorô II as Kaminari Shôkurô in “A Soga Drama on the First Festival Day in the Pleasure District” (“Hatsumombi Kuruwa Soga”) was created by Katsukawa Shunshō (勝川春章) in About 1780.
Actors Ichikawa Danjôrô V as Gokuin Sen’emon, Bandô Mitsugorô I as An no Heibei, and Nakamura Sukegorô II as Kaminari Shôkurô in “A Soga Drama on the First Festival Day in the Pleasure District” (“Hatsumombi Kuruwa Soga”) depicts sumo.
