The Actor Nakamura Nakazo I as Soga no Goro Tokimune in the Play Kazoe Uta Ta Ue Soga, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the First Month, 1776

Katsukawa Shunsho here presents Nakamura Nakazo I in the iconic role of Soga no Goro Tokimune, the younger and more impetuous of the two Soga brothers, in Kazoe Uta Ta Ue Soga, performed at the Nakamura Theater in the first month of 1776. New Year's Soga plays were a yearly fixture in Edo kabuki, and the role of Goro was traditionally played by aragoto specialists in heavy persimmon-red robes and bold kumadori make-up. Nakazo I, normally a quieter, more reflective actor, brings his characteristic intelligence to the part, and Shunsho captures both the costume's standing-collar bulk and the actor's introspective face. The print belongs to the mature phase of the Katsukawa school's yakusha-e, when Shunsho's compositions had settled into the clear hosoban format, restrained palette, and confident line that distinguish his work from the earlier Torii idiom. Color and pattern in the costume are handled with care: a few well-chosen blocks of indigo, ocher, and red carry the entire image, with the printed black outline doing most of the descriptive work. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression, which functioned in Edo as a souvenir of a specific opening-month production and as a likeness collectors could pin to a wall or paste into an album. As such, it stands among the surviving documents that show how Edo ukiyo-e and live kabuki existed in continuous dialogue throughout the 1770s, with Shunsho and the Katsukawa school as the dominant translators between stage and page.