The Actor Ichikawa Danjuro V as Hannya no Goro in the Play Sugata no Hana Yuki no Kuronushi, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1776

Katsukawa Shunsho here records Ichikawa Danjuro V as Hannya no Goro in Sugata no Hana Yuki no Kuronushi, performed at the Nakamura Theater for the kaomise of the eleventh month, 1776. The Art Institute of Chicago impression shows Danjuro V in one of the demonic and martial roles for which the Ichikawa line was famous, the name Hannya itself referencing the female demon of noh tradition appropriated into kabuki as a marker of monstrous fury. Shunsho gives the figure a stance that suggests bound power: weighted, contained, with the costume's heavy patterning anchoring the lower half of the composition while the actor's individualized face dominates above. The Katsukawa school transformed Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e during the 1770s precisely by such treatments, abandoning the masked, generic faces of earlier actor prints in favor of likenesses that fans could match against the live performances they had attended. Within this project, the kaomise productions assumed particular importance, since they announced the troupe for the year and previewed the costumes and roles that would dominate later seasons. Shunsho's documentation of Danjuro V at the Nakamura Theater is among the most extensive bodies of Edo ukiyo-e devoted to any single actor and has shaped modern understanding of late-eighteenth-century kabuki performance.