The Actor Nakamura Tomijuro I as the female fox from Mt. Ubagadake in the play "Chigo Torii Tobiiri Kitsune," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the eleventh month, 1777

Katsukawa Shunsho's hosoban shows Nakamura Tomijuro I as the female fox from Mt. Ubagadake in the dance-drama "Chigo Torii Tobiiri Kitsune" ("Heavenly Child - The Fox Leaps Through the Shrine Gate"), performed at the Ichimura Theater in the eleventh month of 1777. Tomijuro I was a celebrated onnagata best known for spectacular fox-spirit roles, in which the actor flickered between courtesan grace and supernatural quickness, a transformation that demanded both refined dance technique and bursts of athletic gesture. Shunsho catches the figure mid-turn, the long kimono sweeping out at the hem and one sleeve raised as if to brush a stray strand of hair. The Katsukawa school's mature yakusha-e style, which Shunsho perfected during the 1770s, organizes the design: a face individuated enough to identify Tomijuro under white make-up, a tightly controlled palette of muted reds, indigos, and earth tones, and a disciplined printed outline that holds the composition together. As an Edo ukiyo-e print of the kaomise season, the sheet would have been published within weeks of the play's opening to capitalize on audience excitement and to advertise the season's stars. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression, which survives now as both an aesthetic object and a primary visual document of an important late-Edo onnagata performance, and as evidence of the Katsukawa workshop's ability to translate the kinetic energy of fox dances into still pictorial form.