The Actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Soga no Goro Tokimune in the Play Haru wa Soga Akebono-zoshi (?), Performed at the Nakamura Theater (?) in the First Month, 1772 (?)

This color woodblock print by Katsukawa Shunsho is linked to a performance at the Nakamura Theater in the first month of 1772, depicting the actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II as the impulsive younger Soga brother, Soga no Goro Tokimune, in the play Haru wa Soga Akebono-zoshi. The Soga brothers' revenge against their father's killer was the perennial subject of New Year's kabuki in Edo, treated as a foundational story of loyalty and youthful vigour and revived each spring with new variants. Shunsho stages Monnosuke II in a vigorous pose appropriate to Goro's hot-blooded character, his costume registered through careful colour and pattern. The actor's face is rendered with the individualised features that defined the Katsukawa school's reformation of yakusha-e, replacing the generic masks of earlier actor printing with portraits that an Edo audience could recognise. The plain ground focuses attention on stance and costume, the design functioning at once as portraiture and as a souvenir of a specific staging. The print is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where it contributes to a documented record of the 1772 Edo theatrical season and exemplifies how Shunsho and the Katsukawa school used yakusha-e to anchor each year's most beloved kabuki traditions to specific casts and performances.