The Actor Osagawa Tsuneyo II as the Courtesan Miyagino (?) in the Play Go Taiheiki Shiraishi-banashi (?), Performed at the Morita Theater in the Fourth Month, 1780 (?)

This Katsukawa Shunsho hosoban yakusha-e portrays the actor Osagawa Tsuneyo II in what is believed to be the role of the courtesan Miyagino in the play Go Taiheiki Shiraishi-banashi, performed at the Morita Theater in the fourth month of 1780. Go Taiheiki Shiraishi-banashi was one of the most enduring kabuki dramas of the Edo period, based on the historical revenge story of the Miyagino and Shinobu sisters; the role of Miyagino, the elder sister who works as a courtesan in order to seek vengeance for the family, was a standard onnagata vehicle for layered emotional projection. Osagawa Tsuneyo II was a leading female-role specialist in Edo in this period, and Shunsho's portrait places him in the dignified pose of a high-ranking courtesan, with elaborate kosode and obi rendered in the carefully disciplined colour of the Katsukawa school's mature manner. The conditional reading of role and production reflects scholarly caution rather than artistic uncertainty: the cartouche and surrounding evidence have been studied closely without yielding an entirely secure identification, and the curatorial record at the Art Institute of Chicago, in whose Clarence Buckingham Collection the impression is held, accordingly marks these elements as tentative. The print remains a characteristic example of Shunsho's late An'ei yakusha-e, contributing to the visual record of Edo ukiyo-e at the height of the Katsukawa school's authority over the form.