The Actors Matsumoto Koshiro II as Yoemon and Yoshizawa Sakinosuke III as Kasane, His Wife

Katsukawa Shunsho's yakusha-e pairs Matsumoto Koshiro II as Yoemon with the onnagata Yoshizawa Sakinosuke III as Kasane, Yoemon's wife, in a scene drawn from one of Edo kabuki's most enduring ghost stories. The Kasane legend tells of a murdered wife whose disfigured spirit returns to haunt her husband, and Edo audiences encountered the tale through multiple kabuki and joruri productions that turned Kasane into one of the great female roles for onnagata of the period. Shunsho composes the scene as an intimate two-figure interaction in which Matsumoto Koshiro II's robust male presence is set against the more elongated, weighted stillness of Yoshizawa Sakinosuke III's Kasane, allowing the print to communicate marital tension without resorting to the explicit horror imagery sometimes used in later treatments. As a Katsukawa school design, the print belongs to the moment in Edo ukiyo-e when yakusha-e had become a reliable medium for transmitting the emotional contours of a kabuki performance, not just its surface costuming. The work captures both actors at the height of their careers and demonstrates the kind of precise physiognomic recording that Shunsho pioneered and that came to define the Katsukawa school's contribution to Edo print culture. The impression is held by the Art Institute of Chicago and remains a useful document of how Katsukawa school designers handled paired roles in domestic kabuki drama.