The Actor Segawa Kikunojo III as Onami Disguised as the Dragon Princess in the Play Saki Masuya Ume no Kachidoki, Performed at the Ichimura Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1778

Katsukawa Shunsho's portrait of Segawa Kikunojo III as Onami, disguised as the Dragon Princess, in the play Saki Masuya Ume no Kachidoki at the Ichimura Theater in the eleventh month of 1778, brings together a beloved onnagata and a layered transformation role. Disguise plays, particularly those involving aquatic or supernatural identities, were a favored kabuki device, and the Dragon Princess motif drew on long traditions of Japanese folklore connecting beautiful women with serpent or dragon spirits dwelling in lakes and seas. Kikunojo III, one of the most celebrated female-role actors of his generation, brought a refinement of gesture to such double-natured parts that contemporary audiences and critics in their hyoban-ki (actor reviews) praised in detail. Shunsho's print, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, applies the Katsukawa school's actor-likeness approach to record the performer rather than an idealized stage type. The hosoban vertical format directs the eye to the figure and the cascading patterns of Kikunojo III's robes, which would have signaled both the disguise of Onami and the latent presence of the princess underneath. The eleventh-month kaomise season at the Ichimura Theater was a peak moment in the Edo kabuki calendar, and yakusha-e by Shunsho and his Katsukawa pupils served as both publicity and souvenir for those who attended. As an exemplar of the integration of role documentation, actor portraiture, and decorative beauty that defined late eighteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e, the sheet typifies why Shunsho's Katsukawa school redefined yakusha-e and shaped the subsequent course of the genre into the nineteenth century.