The Actor Onoe Matsusuke I as Nakaomi Katsumi Disguised as the Farmer Datta no Nizo, in the Play Shitenno-ji Nobori Kuyo, Performed at the Ichimura Theater in the Eighth Month, 1773

This Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e, dated to around 1768, depicts Onoe Matsusuke I as Nakaomi Katsumi disguised as the farmer Datta no Nizo in the play Shitenno-ji Nobori Kuyo at the Ichimura Theater. The convention of yatsushi, or noble disguised as commoner, supplied kabuki playwrights with rich material for dramatic reversal, allowing a single role to combine the dignity of an aristocratic identity with the rough manners and humble dress of a lower-class persona. Shunsho captures Matsusuke I in the farmer's plain garments, his face nonetheless rendered with the individualized features that signaled to Edo ukiyo-e viewers the actor's specific identity. The transformation of Matsusuke I, founder of the Onoe lineage that would later produce the celebrated Kikugoro line, into a humble rural laborer registers the kabuki delight in slumming aesthetics that flourished alongside the more lavish costuming of high-rank roles. As founder of the Katsukawa school, Shunsho replaced the formulaic faces of the earlier Torii school with recognizable individual likenesses, an innovation that would dominate yakusha-e production for the remainder of the century. The Katsukawa workshop trained Shunko, Shunei, and the young Hokusai. This impression is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago. The print contributes valuable documentation of Ichimura Theater repertoire and demonstrates the visual strategies through which Shunsho conveyed kabuki's complex layering of social identity within a single static image.