The Actor Ichikawa Yaozo II as Soga no Juro Sukenari Disguised as the Proefessional Jester Senraku (?) in the Play Soga Moyo Aigo no Wakamatsu (?), Performed at the Nakamura Theater (?) in the Second Month, 1769 (?)

This Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e, dated to around 1764 and tentatively linked to Soga Moyo Aigo no Wakamatsu at the Nakamura Theater, depicts Ichikawa Yaozo II as Soga no Juro Sukenari disguised as the professional jester Senraku. The Soga brothers' tale, rooted in a twelfth-century blood feud, became one of the most enduring subjects of Edo kabuki and was traditionally staged each New Year, with playwrights generating endless variations on the brothers' search for their father's killer. The convention of disguise was a favorite kabuki device, allowing a single role to combine two contrasting registers of performance, and Shunsho here presents Juro inhabiting the comic persona of a jester. The figure is captured mid-action, his stance and facial expression conveying the dual identity inherent to the role. Shunsho, who founded the Katsukawa school and revolutionized yakusha-e by introducing recognizable individual likenesses, secured his reputation through hundreds of such prints documenting Edo's stage culture. His individualized approach to actor portraiture displaced the generic conventions of the earlier Torii school and established the standards followed by his pupils Shunko, Shunei, and Hokusai. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this impression as part of its expansive Edo ukiyo-e collection. The print remains a useful document of how mid-1760s kabuki blended classical narrative with comic and supernatural conventions, and how Shunsho's Katsukawa school prints translated that theatrical complexity into a portable visual medium for print consumers.