The Actor Nakamura Nakazo I as Tezuka no Taro Mitsumori Disguised as the Monkey Trainer Tonkichi Tochibei, in the Play Soga Moyo Aigo no Wakamatsu, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the First Month, 1769

Katsukawa Shunsho records Nakamura Nakazo I in a layered disguise role from the 1769 Nakamura Theater production of Soga Moyo Aigo no Wakamatsu: Tezuka no Taro Mitsumori, posing as the monkey trainer Tonkichi Tochibei. The print, held at the Art Institute of Chicago, exemplifies the Katsukawa school's commitment to capturing not just an actor and a role but the precise theatrical moment in which one identity is hidden inside another. Nakazo I was particularly admired for his ability to handle such transformation roles, and Shunsho's design reads the costume of the wandering monkey trainer as a partial mask, leaving the warrior's bearing legible beneath the disguise. The Soga material gave Edo Kabuki an inexhaustible supply of intrigue, vengeance, and reunion scenes, and Soga Moyo Aigo no Wakamatsu was one of the new variations that producers staged regularly in the first month of the year. Shunsho's nigao-e likeness allows Nakazo's specific facial structure to coexist with the picaresque trappings of the monkey trainer, creating an image whose pleasure depends on the viewer's awareness of both surfaces. As Edo ukiyo-e, the sheet sits within Shunsho's larger documentation of New Year theatrical openings, while as a Katsukawa school yakusha-e it stands as a careful study of how disguise itself could become subject matter for actor portraiture.