The Actor Bando Mitsugoro I as Taira no Tadamori Disguised as a Potted-Plant Seller in the Play Sakuya Kono Hana no Kaomise, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1776

This Katsukawa Shunsho hosoban portrait, conserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, shows Bando Mitsugoro I as Taira no Tadamori, the eleventh-century courtier and warrior, disguised in commoner guise as a potted-plant seller, in Sakuya Kono Hana no Kaomise at the Nakamura Theater in the eleventh-month kaomise of 1776. The double identity is a quintessentially kabuki theatrical device: the great samurai forefather of the Heike clan reduced to a peddler's shoulder pole and humble robes, his nobility legible only to attentive viewers who can read past the disguise. Shunsho stages the layered identity through subtle cues, the balance of the pole and the carriage of the head suggesting reserved military bearing within the modest costume. Bando Mitsugoro I was an actor of considerable range, and his frequent appearances in Shunsho prints help document the Katsukawa school's central role in chronicling the leading Edo theatrical figures of the 1770s. The kaomise context lent particular importance to this image, since the eleventh-month productions announced each theater's company for the new year. As Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e, the print exemplifies how Shunsho combined dramatic specificity with portrait fidelity, the documentary mission that defined the Katsukawa school's reshaping of the genre.