The Actor Yoshizawa Sakinosuke III as Naniwazu in the Play Sugata no Hana Yuki no Kuronushi, Performed at the Ichimura Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1776

Yoshizawa Sakinosuke III appears here in the female role of Naniwazu in the eleventh-month 1776 production of Sugata no Hana Yuki no Kuronushi at the Ichimura Theater, recorded by Katsukawa Shunsho with the close fidelity that defined the Katsukawa school's contribution to Edo ukiyo-e. Sakinosuke III was an onnagata, a specialist in female roles, and Shunsho's design respects both the constructed femininity of the stage and the recognizable masculine features beneath, balancing observed likeness with the conventions of the role. The print is held in the Art Institute of Chicago and disseminated through ukiyo-e.org. The eleventh-month face-showing performances, kaomise, were the kabuki theaters' annual opportunity to display their newly engaged company, making the prints commissioned for these productions of particular promotional importance to the theaters and of particular collecting interest to Edo audiences. Shunsho was by 1776 the dominant designer of yakusha-e in Edo, and his portrait technique, an isolated figure on unprinted ground, fluent contour line, costume pattern carefully calibrated to the role, established the visual standard for the genre. His attention to onnagata specifically helped distinguish Katsukawa work from earlier Edo ukiyo-e traditions that had often treated female-role performers with conventional bijin-ga features. The print belongs within a deep American holding of Shunsho actor prints in Chicago, the collection on which much of the modern scholarship on the Katsukawa school depends.