The Actor Onoe Matsusuke I as Baramon no Kichi in the Play Hatsumombi Kuruwa Soga, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the First Month, 1780

This Katsukawa Shunsho print records Onoe Matsusuke I as Baramon no Kichi in Hatsumombi Kuruwa Soga, performed at the Nakamura Theater in the first month of 1780. As with all New Year productions in Edo kabuki, the play layers a Soga-brothers revenge plot over a contemporary pleasure-quarter setting, and the role of Baramon no Kichi, with its exotic name, points to the era's appetite for boundary-pushing characters drawn from rumor, foreign trade, and the demimonde. Onoe Matsusuke I was particularly identified with unconventional and supernatural roles, and the part suited his interpretive range. Shunsho's Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e for the production, in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection, treats Matsusuke I with the Katsukawa school's hallmark portraiture: his particular facial features, gesture, and bearing are described with sufficient precision that contemporary viewers could identify him without textual cues. The hosoban format directs visual energy to the single figure, with the costume and accessories conveying the role's distinctive identity. Within the kabuki calendar, first-month performances launched a theater's year and were anchored by Soga material; visual documentation by Katsukawa school yakusha-e ensured that even fans who could not attend the production could share in its dramatis personae. Shunsho's contribution lay not only in producing such prints but in establishing the standards by which subsequent Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e would be made: rigorous likeness, specific role and theater attribution, and disciplined decorative composition.