The Actors Bando Mitsugoro I as Hata no Kawakatsu (right), and Otani Hiroemon III as the Manservant (Yakko) Gansuke (left), in the Play Miya-bashira Iwao no Butai (Shrine Pillars on a Stone Base), Performed at the Morita Theater from the Fifteenth Day of the Seventh Month, 1773

Katsukawa Shunsho composes a double-actor scene from Miya-bashira Iwao no Butai ("Shrine Pillars on a Stone Base"), performed at the Morita Theater from the fifteenth day of the seventh month, 1773. On the right, Bando Mitsugoro I plays the historical figure Hata no Kawakatsu; on the left stands Otani Hiroemon III as the yakko (manservant) Gansuke. The pairing was a deliberate contrast: Mitsugoro's solemn courtier stance set against Hiroemon's swaggering low-born servant. Shunsho's Katsukawa school style suits this kind of confrontation perfectly. He gives each actor a distinct face, posture, and costume palette, and the negative space between them on the page reproduces the felt distance of the stage. The diptych or paired hosoban format was a Katsukawa specialty, allowing collectors to assemble entire casts on the wall. Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e of this date were sold cheaply enough that ordinary theatergoers could buy them as souvenirs, yet were drawn carefully enough that connoisseurs treated them as serious portraits. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression, important both as a record of a specific summer-season Morita Theater production and as a sample of how Shunsho's workshop handled multi-figure compositions while keeping the focus on individual likeness. This kind of clear, character-driven design is what allowed the Katsukawa school to dominate Edo actor prints until the rise of the Utagawa school in the next generation.