The Actor Segawa Kikunojo II as the Courtesan Maizuru in the Play Furisode Kisaragi Soga, Performed at the Ichimura Theater in the Second Month, 1772

Designed by Katsukawa Shunsho and connected to a kabuki staging at the Ichimura Theater in the second month of 1772, this print depicts the onnagata actor Segawa Kikunojo II in the role of the courtesan Maizuru in the play Furisode Kisaragi Soga. Kikunojo II was among the most celebrated female-role specialists of the Edo period, prized for the elegance of his stage presence, and Shunsho captures him in the layered, sweeping robes appropriate to a high-ranking pleasure-quarter character. The Soga theme refers to the perennially popular cycle of revenge dramas surrounding the Soga brothers, traditionally programmed each spring as an auspicious opening to the kabuki calendar in Edo. Shunsho's design exemplifies the new generation of yakusha-e that the Katsukawa school introduced to Edo ukiyo-e: instead of the generic, mask-like faces of earlier actor prints, his portraits register individualised features, observed bearing, and the specific costume worn on a particular occasion. The result is a portrait that doubled as a souvenir of a real performance for theatre-going collectors. Now held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the print is a representative example of how the Katsukawa school remade the actor print as a documentary genre, and of Shunsho's central role in shaping the visual record of Edo kabuki in the early 1770s.