The Actor Nakamura Nakazo I as Hakamadare Yasusuke or Watanabe no Tsuna (?) in the Play Shintenno Tonoi no Kisewata (?), Performed at the Nakamura Theater (?) in the Eleventh Month, 1781 (?)

This Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e, in the Art Institute of Chicago's holdings, portrays the actor Nakamura Nakazo I in a heroic male role, identified as either Hakamadare Yasusuke or Watanabe no Tsuna, from the play Shintenno Tonoi no Kisewata, performed at the Nakamura Theater in the eleventh month of 1781. The play drew on the medieval narrative cycles surrounding the Shitenno, the four guardian-warriors of the Heian general Minamoto no Yorimitsu, whose exploits against bandits and demons formed a perennial source of kabuki story material. The composition centers Nakazo I against a clean ground, the heroic costume and weapon rendered through Shunsho's characteristic combination of precise outline and balanced color, with the actor's recognizable facial features carrying the burden of identification. As founder of the Katsukawa school of Edo ukiyo-e, Shunsho insisted that yakusha-e should document named performers as individuals, an approach he carried into every category of role he depicted, from the most exalted hero to the most humble servant. Nakazo I was one of the great character actors of his generation, equally adept at supernatural transformation roles and at the dignified gravity required of the Shitenno warrior parts. The Art Institute's sheet preserves the print as a record of the eleventh-month kaomise season, the most important theatrical occasion of the Edo year, and as a representative example of the Katsukawa school's mature documentary practice.