The Actor Nakamura Nakazo I as the Renegade Monk Dainichibo Soliciting Alms, in the Play Edo Meisho Midori Soga (Famous Places in Edo: A Green Soga), Performed at the Morita Theater from the Fifteenth Day of the First Month, 1779

This Katsukawa Shunsho print documents Nakamura Nakazo I as the renegade monk Dainichibo soliciting alms, in Edo Meisho Midori Soga (Famous Places in Edo: A Green Soga), performed at the Morita Theater from the fifteenth day of the first month of 1779. The play interweaves Edo's celebrated meisho, or famous places, with the Soga brothers' New Year revenge plot, providing a vehicle for stage tableaux of the city's neighborhoods and personalities. The role of Dainichibo, a renegade monk soliciting alms, is one of kabuki's recurring outsider types: nominally religious, actually predatory, the character allowed Nakamura Nakazo I to display the psychological complexity for which he was renowned. Shunsho's Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e for the production, in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection, applies the Katsukawa school's actor-likeness approach with characteristic precision: Nakazo's particular features are recorded so that contemporary viewers would have identified him at a glance, while monk's robes, hat, and begging bowl signal the role. The hosoban format directs energy to the single figure, with restrained surrounding space. As one of Shunsho's many portraits of Nakazo I, the print contributes to a particularly rich corpus documenting one of the most psychologically interesting actors of the late eighteenth century. Within the broader trajectory of Edo ukiyo-e, Shunsho's Katsukawa school yakusha-e established the framework that later masters of the genre would build upon, and prints like this one remain principal sources for understanding the visual world of Edo kabuki in its mature mid-Tenmei phase.