The Actor Arashi Hinasuke I as Watanabe Choshichi Tonau in the Play Tokimekuya O-Edo no Hatsuyuki (Thriving Now: The First Snow of Edo), Performed at the Morita Theater from the First Day of the Eleventh Month, 1780

Katsukawa Shunsho here depicts Arashi Hinasuke I as Watanabe Choshichi Tonau in Tokimekuya O-Edo no Hatsuyuki (Thriving Now: The First Snow of Edo), performed at the Morita Theater from the first day of the eleventh month of 1780. The eleventh-month opening was the kaomise programme that introduced the company's contracted stars for the new theatre season, and snow-themed productions were particularly characteristic of Edo's winter stage. Arashi Hinasuke I had recently arrived in Edo from the Kamigata theatres of Kyoto and Osaka, and his appearance at the Morita Theater would have been a major commercial event. Shunsho's hosoban yakusha-e places him in the strong vertical pose typical of the Katsukawa school: full-length, costume rendered in clean flat colour, the face individualised so that the viewer recognises this particular player rather than a generic type. By 1780 Shunsho's authority over Edo ukiyo-e actor portraiture was effectively complete, and his Katsukawa school pupils -- Shunko and the rising Shun'ei -- were active alongside him in covering the season. The print is held in the Clarence Buckingham Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. It documents both the integration of a Kamigata star into the Edo kabuki repertoire and the kind of carefully observed individual portraiture that distinguished Katsukawa school yakusha-e from the older Torii style.