The Actor Ichikawa Raizo II as Murakami Hikoshiro Yoshiteru in the Play Oyoroi Ebido Shinozuka, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1772

This color woodblock print by Katsukawa Shunsho commemorates a kabuki performance at the Nakamura Theater in the eleventh month of 1772, depicting the actor Ichikawa Raizo II in the role of the warrior Murakami Hikoshiro Yoshiteru in the play Oyoroi Ebido Shinozuka. The eleventh-month kaomise season was the calendar's most important commercial moment for Edo theatres, and Shunsho's prints functioned as souvenirs of the new season's star turns. Raizo is shown in a martial pose, his armour and bearing emphasised through carefully balanced color and crisp outlines. His face is rendered with the individualised features that the Katsukawa school had introduced to yakusha-e, departing decisively from the generic masks of earlier actor printing. As one of the founders of the Katsukawa school, Shunsho was at this date reshaping the visual idiom of Edo ukiyo-e, putting recognisable portraits of working actors at the centre of the print market. The plain background concentrates attention on costume and bearing, the print serving as both an aesthetic object and a documentary record of a specific staging. The sheet is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where it contributes to a detailed record of the 1772 Edo theatrical season and exemplifies the Katsukawa school's mature approach to single-figure warrior portraits within yakusha-e.