The Actor Ichikawa Danjuro V as Chichibu no Shigetada

This Katsukawa Shunsho print, dated to around 1768, depicts Ichikawa Danjuro V in the role of the medieval warrior Chichibu no Shigetada, a figure associated with the Genpei wars and the early years of the Kamakura shogunate. Danjuro V was the leading actor of his generation and head of the most prestigious kabuki lineage in Edo, the Ichikawa house, which traditionally specialized in the bombastic aragoto style of swaggering warrior heroes. Shunsho captures the actor in characteristic warrior costume, his individualized facial features registering the intensity of his stage presence. As founder of the Katsukawa school, Shunsho pioneered the use of recognizable actor likenesses in Edo ukiyo-e, replacing the generic conventions of the earlier Torii school and establishing the standards followed by his pupils Shunko, Shunei, and the young Hokusai. Danjuro V was among Shunsho's most frequent subjects, and the extensive corpus of Danjuro V prints from the Katsukawa workshop helped fix the actor's iconography in the popular imagination. This impression is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, an institution with substantial holdings of Katsukawa school work. The print contributes to scholarly reconstruction of Danjuro V's repertoire and exemplifies how Shunsho deployed the conventions of warrior portraiture to convey the imposing physical and dramatic command that made Danjuro V the defining performer of late eighteenth-century Edo kabuki.