Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Shingen in “A String of Prayer Beads Shaken at a Ribbon of Waterfall”

Held by the Cleveland Museum of Art, this Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e print depicts the actor Ichimura Uzaemon IX in the role of the warlord Shingen in the kabuki production known by the poetic title A String of Prayer Beads Shaken at a Ribbon of Waterfall. Shunsho, working at the height of his career in 1775, situates the figure within a compositional frame that emphasizes both dramatic stance and the textile patterning of the costume. As founder of the Katsukawa school, Shunsho had by this date already established the conventions that would define late Edo ukiyo-e actor prints, replacing the generic theatrical mask with a portrait approach grounded in observation of the individual performer's features. Ichimura Uzaemon IX was a leading actor of the period and managed the Ichimura Theater, one of the three licensed kabuki houses of Edo, making him a frequent subject of Katsukawa school prints. The role of Shingen, drawn from the historical narratives surrounding the sixteenth-century warlord Takeda Shingen, allowed for a heroic posture and the deployment of armor or martial costume detail that Shunsho's workshop rendered with characteristic precision. The Cleveland Museum's sheet preserves the print as a record of a specific theatrical season and as a representative example of how Shunsho's designs functioned both as artistic objects and as commercial souvenirs of the Edo entertainment economy. The image embodies the documentary impulse that distinguished Katsukawa school yakusha-e from the more decorative actor prints that preceded it.