The Actor Yamashita Kinsaku II as Tsukimasu, Acting as Sakura-maru, in the Play Miya-bashira Iwao no Butai, Performed at the Morita Theater in the Seventh Month, 1773

This Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e, dated to around 1768, depicts Yamashita Kinsaku II as Tsukimasu performing the role of Sakura-maru within the play Miya-bashira Iwao no Butai at the Morita Theater. The compounded identity, where the actor plays a character who in turn is playing yet another role, reflects the kabuki delight in self-referential layering, often used to incorporate iconic legacy roles such as Sakura-maru, one of the three brothers in the celebrated puppet-derived play Sugawara denju tenarai kagami. Kinsaku II was a leading onnagata, and Shunsho captures him in the elaborate costume associated with Sakura-maru, the figure's posture and facial features individualized in the manner characteristic of Katsukawa school yakusha-e. As founder of the Katsukawa school, Shunsho transformed Edo ukiyo-e kabuki portraiture by introducing recognizable likenesses that replaced the generic faces of the earlier Torii school. His extensive production of single-figure and multi-figure actor prints across the 1760s and 1770s set the standards followed by his pupils Shunko, Shunei, and the young Hokusai. The Morita Theater, one of Edo's three licensed kabuki venues, supplied the visual material for a steady stream of Katsukawa school prints throughout this period. This impression is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago. The print documents an evocative example of kabuki's nested role-playing and contributes to a fuller understanding of the conventions through which late eighteenth-century onnagata constructed their stage personas.