The Actor Iwai Hanshiro IV as Kojoro-gitsune of Hakata in the Play Hikitsurete Yagoe Taiheiki, Performed at the Morita Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1776

Katsukawa Shunsho records the onnagata Iwai Hanshiro IV as Kojoro-gitsune ("Little Vixen") of Hakata in Hikitsurete Yagoe Taiheiki, staged at the Morita Theater in the eleventh month of 1776. Hanshiro IV was one of the most celebrated female-role specialists of his time, known for combining graceful posture with a sharp, intelligent face that read well even in the smallest print formats. The role of a courtesan-fox combines the high glamour of a Hakata courtesan with the supernatural agility of a kitsune, allowing the actor to slip between elegant restraint and sudden animal energy. Shunsho's hosoban print, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, captures Hanshiro in a quiet moment, the heavy outer robe drawn closed and the head tilted slightly downward, leaving the fox identity implied rather than explicit. The Katsukawa school's mature Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e style is fully realized here: an individuated face under the white onnagata make-up, a small but precise palette of indigo, brown, and red, and a disciplined contour line that defines costume without crowding it. The eleventh-month kaomise season was the most important slot in the Edo kabuki year, when each licensed theater announced its troupe for the coming year, and Shunsho's prints functioned as both publicity and souvenir. The sheet now serves as a primary visual document for an actor and a performance otherwise sparingly recorded in the surviving written record.