The Actors Otani Hiroji III as Koga Saburo, and Ichimura Uzaemon IX as the Devil of Kogakeyama, the Spirit of Wakasa no Zenji Yasumura, in the Play Kono Hana Yotsugi no Hachi no Ki, Performed at the Ichimura Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1771

Katsukawa Shunsho's yakusha-e records a charged paired moment from 'Kono Hana Yotsugi no Hachi no Ki,' staged at the Ichimura Theater in the eleventh month of 1771, with Otani Hiroji III as the warrior Koga Saburo and Ichimura Uzaemon IX as the Devil of Kogakeyama, the vengeful spirit of Wakasa no Zenji Yasumura. The play participates in a vein of Edo kabuki obsessed with restless spirits and supernatural retribution, where contemporary actors borrowed the iconographic vocabulary of demons and ghosts to electrify legendary historical material. Shunsho composes the print as a confrontation, with Otani Hiroji III's grounded warrior physique offset against the demonic verticality and bristling hair of Ichimura Uzaemon IX's possessed figure. As a Katsukawa school design, the work is exemplary in pairing two specific actors in two specific roles on a specific stage in a specific month, treating the print as a documentary artifact of the eleventh-month kaomise program at the Ichimura Theater. The composition also showcases the school's mature handling of the diptych or paired-figure design, in which each actor receives an individualized portrait while the overall composition reads as a unified theatrical event. Held in the Art Institute of Chicago, the impression is one of many Katsukawa school records of the Edo kabuki season's most prestigious programming slot and underscores Shunsho's central place in shaping Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e of the early 1770s.