Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Soga no Goro

Held by the Cleveland Museum of Art, this Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e portrays the actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II in the role of Soga no Goro Tokimune, one of the most frequently performed heroic male parts in the entire kabuki repertory. The Soga brothers' revenge narrative, dramatizing the twelfth-century vendetta of Goro and his elder brother Juro against the killer of their father, formed the foundation of the Soga-mono cycle that returned to the Edo stage in some form every new year and spring. Shunsho composes Monnosuke II in the dramatic stance conventional for the Goro role, with the recognizable costume elements and the upright posture that signaled the character's youthful vigor and undeterred resolve. The actor's facial features are rendered with the close observation that defined the Katsukawa school's approach to yakusha-e, allowing contemporary viewers to identify Monnosuke II at a glance even without an inscribed name. As founder of the Katsukawa school of Edo ukiyo-e, Shunsho established the convention that performers should be depicted as named individuals rather than as generic theatrical types, and the Goro role gave him a recurring opportunity to document successive seasons of Soga-mono productions across the major Edo theaters. The Cleveland Museum's sheet preserves a representative example of Shunsho's mature yakusha-e practice and of the ongoing Edo theatrical engagement with the Soga revenge story.