The Actor Matsumoto Koshiro IV as Ogata no Saburo Disguised as Matsuura Saemon in the Play Ichi no Tomi Tsuki no Kaomise, Performed at the Morita Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1774

Katsukawa Shunsho captures Matsumoto Koshiro IV as the warrior Ogata no Saburo disguised as Matsuura Saemon in Ichi no Tomi Tsuki no Kaomise, performed at the Morita Theater in the eleventh month of 1774. Kaomise ("face-showing") productions opened the kabuki year and introduced the casts each theater had assembled for the coming twelve months; they tended to feature elaborate plots stuffed with historical and legendary figures, the better to display the troupe's range. Shunsho's hosoban print, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, shows Koshiro IV in a yatsushi disguise scene, where a warrior of high birth temporarily hides among common men. The figure stands with one foot forward, the weight slightly forward, the sword tilted under the outer robe in a way that hints at the true status of the character. The Katsukawa school's mature Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e style is present in the disciplined palette and the carefully observed face, sharp at the nose and slightly heavy at the jaw, that Shunsho consistently used to identify Koshiro across multiple prints. The eleventh-month season was a commercial peak for both the theaters and the print publishers who served them; Shunsho and the Katsukawa workshop would produce dozens of single-figure prints from a single kaomise run, of which this is a fine surviving example. The sheet stands today as both an aesthetic object and a primary document of mid-1770s Edo kabuki staging.