The Actor Iwai Hanshiro IV as the Courtesan Agemaki in the Play Sukeroku Yukari no Hatsu-zakura, Performed at the Ichimura Theater in the Third Month, 1776

In this yakusha-e at the Art Institute of Chicago, Katsukawa Shunsho depicts the onnagata Iwai Hanshiro IV in the celebrated female role of the courtesan Agemaki, lover of the chivalrous commoner-hero Sukeroku, in the play Sukeroku Yukari no Hatsu-zakura at the Ichimura Theater in the third month of 1776. Sukeroku is among the eighteen plays canonized as the kabuki juhachiban, and Agemaki, with her layered red and black robes and elaborate horizontal hairpins, is one of the most demanding female parts in the repertoire. Shunsho gives Hanshiro IV a poised three-quarter stance that allows the costume's massed pattern, the trailing obi, and the towering hairstyle to read clearly within the hosoban's tall narrow field. The figure is set against the spare background that the Katsukawa school favored, focusing attention entirely on costume detail and physiognomy. Hanshiro IV was the leading onnagata of his generation in Edo, and Shunsho's representations of him helped fix Agemaki's visual type for later generations of ukiyo-e artists. As a printed record of Edo ukiyo-e's intersection with the kabuki calendar, this sheet exemplifies how Shunsho's studio could transform a single staged moment into a circulating, dateable image preserved in collections worldwide.