The Actors Nakamura Kashiwagi as a Wakashu (second from right), and Three Unidentified Actors as Yakko

In this Katsukawa Shunsho design, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, four figures stride across the sheet: Nakamura Kashiwagi in the role of a wakashu, or youthful man, second from the right, joined by three unidentified actors playing yakko, the swaggering manservants who were a staple of Edo Kabuki choreography. The yakko role, with its bold posturing and stylized weapon-handling, gave actors an opportunity to display physical bravado, and Shunsho exploits that energy by arranging the figures in dynamic, slightly off-balance stances. The wakashu, by contrast, carries an ambiguous erotic charge characteristic of eighteenth-century Edo culture, where the figure of the beautiful young man was a recurring subject in ukiyo-e prints and texts. Shunsho's draftsmanship balances the two registers, integrating the swagger of the yakko with the more refined elegance of the wakashu. As Katsukawa school yakusha-e, the print exemplifies how Shunsho expanded the genre to encompass not just star portraits but ensemble scenes that captured the rhythm of group performance. Within the wider tradition of Edo ukiyo-e, such designs document the social and theatrical typologies that Kabuki staged for its audiences, while also showcasing the Katsukawa school's ability to inflect generic roles with individualized likeness wherever the actor was known. The sheet remains a vivid record of how Shunsho fused character, costume, and crowd-pleasing physicality into a single graphic composition.