The Actor Bando Mitsugoro I as Abbot Saimyo-ji Tokiyori, Disguised as a Monk, in the Joruri "Onna Hachi no Ki" (A Female Version of "The Potted Trees") from Part Two of the Play Onna Aruji Hatsuyuki no Sekai (A Woman as Master: The World of the First Snow), Performed at the Morita Theater from the First Day of the Eleventh Month, 1773

Katsukawa Shunsho records Bando Mitsugoro I as the retired regent Hojo Tokiyori (Abbot Saimyo-ji), disguised as a wandering monk, in the joruri "Onna Hachi no Ki" ("A Female Version of The Potted Trees") from part two of Onna Aruji Hatsuyuki no Sekai ("A Woman as Master: The World of the First Snow"), staged at the Morita Theater from the first day of the eleventh month, 1773. The original Hachi no Ki is one of the great noh plays, in which an impoverished samurai burns his prized potted trees to warm a traveling monk who turns out to be Tokiyori in disguise; the kabuki "female version" reworked the legend with a woman as the destitute host. Shunsho shows Mitsugoro in pilgrim's robes, the rosary in his right hand and the broad-brimmed traveling hat lowered against his shoulder. As one of the founders of the Katsukawa school, Shunsho applied to such role-portraits the principles of Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e he had pioneered: a hosoban format wide enough for a full standing figure, individuated facial features that identify the player, and a restrained color palette in which a few well-judged blocks of indigo, gray, and ocher carry the entire image. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this impression, a survival from a specific kaomise opening and a fine sample of Shunsho's narrative use of yakusha-e to preserve a particular performance within the larger field of Edo ukiyo-e theater imagery.