The Actor Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Soga no Goro Tokimune Disguised as Agemaki no Sukeroku in the Play Sukeroku Yukari no Edo-zakura, Performed at the Ichimura Theater in the Fifth Month, 1782

Preserved by the Art Institute of Chicago, this Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e depicts the actor Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Soga no Goro Tokimune disguised as the legendary man-about-town Agemaki no Sukeroku in the play Sukeroku Yukari no Edo-zakura, staged at the Ichimura Theater in the fifth month of 1782. Sukeroku was the signature role of the Ichikawa Danjuro lineage, and any actor outside that house who took the part did so within a complex tradition of homage and substitution. Shunsho composes Uzaemon IX in the iconic Sukeroku stance, with the purple headband (hachimaki), the elegant kimono, and the cocky posture that defined the character's appeal to Edo audiences. The double-disguise premise, in which the Soga revenger Goro adopts the persona of Sukeroku to penetrate enemy territory, gave the production its dramatic engine and gave Shunsho the chance to document both layers of identity. As founder of the Katsukawa school of Edo ukiyo-e, Shunsho approached yakusha-e as a documentary practice grounded in individualized portraiture, and Uzaemon IX's features are precisely registered even within the heightened theatrical pose. The Sukeroku-mono cycle was a recurring spring-and-summer fixture of Edo kabuki, and Shunsho's repeated treatment of its productions across the 1770s and 1780s forms one of the most coherent visual records of any single role in the period. The Art Institute's sheet preserves a major example of that tradition.