The Actor Nakamura Nakazo I as Kume no Heinaizaemon Disguised as the Street Fortune-teller Kosaka Jinnai, in the Play Kotobuki Banzei Soga, Performed at the Ichimura Theater in the Fifth Month, 1783

Preserved by the Art Institute of Chicago, this Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e portrays the actor Nakamura Nakazo I in a layered disguise role: Kume no Heinaizaemon posing as the street fortune-teller Kosaka Jinnai in the play Kotobuki Banzei Soga, performed at the Ichimura Theater in the fifth month of 1783. The double-identity premise was a favored kabuki device, allowing a single performer to display range across multiple registers of character within a single scene, and Nakazo I was particularly celebrated for his command of such transformations. Shunsho composes the figure as a street fortune-teller, with the costume and implements appropriate to that humble trade, while the actor's individualized facial features anchor the image to Nakazo I as the specific performer. As founder of the Katsukawa school of Edo ukiyo-e, Shunsho insisted that yakusha-e should record named performers as recognizable individuals, and the disguise premise gave him the opportunity to document both the assumed identity and the underlying actor in a single composition. The Soga-mono framework that contained the production was the most enduring of all kabuki story-cycles, returning each spring to the Edo stage in successive revisions. The Art Institute's sheet preserves a representative example of how the Katsukawa school chronicled Nakazo I's celebrated transformation roles across the 1770s and 1780s.