The Actor Yamashita Kinsaku II as Moshio in the Play Izu-goyomi Shibai no Ganjitsu, Performed at the Morita Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1772

Yamashita Kinsaku II appears here in the role of Moshio in the eleventh-month 1772 Morita Theater staging of Izu-goyomi Shibai no Ganjitsu, recorded by Katsukawa Shunsho in the Katsukawa school's now-established yakusha-e manner. Held in the Art Institute of Chicago, the print situates the onnagata against an unprinted ground, the lavish costume of the female role drawn with attention to drape and pattern, the face individuated to the particular performer beneath the role's femininity. Yamashita Kinsaku II was one of the celebrated onnagata of the eighteenth century, and the eleventh-month kaomise production at which this performance took place was the most prestigious of the kabuki year, the theaters' annual opportunity to unveil their newly engaged company. Shunsho's prints for kaomise productions therefore carried significant promotional weight, functioning as both commercial souvenirs for theatergoers and as advertising for the season's troupe. As an example of mature Katsukawa school Edo ukiyo-e from the early 1770s, the print embodies Shunsho's innovations in yakusha-e: the individuated facial likeness, the isolated single-figure composition, the costume pattern modulated to character and role. By this point Shunsho was the dominant designer of actor prints in Edo, and his methods had set the visual vocabulary that the genre would maintain for the rest of the century.