Sumo Wrestler Hiodoshi Katsugorō

Dated to about 1813 (range 1811–1814) and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession 2025.796.6), this Katsukawa Shuntei ōban print is a companion piece to the museum's portrait of Tamagaki Gakunosuke IV, depicting the sumo wrestler Hiodoshi Katsugorō. The two prints were acquired together in 2025 from the Pinkowitz Family gift and form a paired set documenting two ranked wrestlers of the Bunka-era sumo world. The vertical ōban format and the conventional iconography — the wrestler standing in formal pose, dressed in the embroidered ceremonial apron (keshō-mawashi) that identified his patronage and gymnasium affiliation — situate the work firmly within the Katsukawa sumo-e tradition that Shunshō had inaugurated in the 1780s. The depiction of individual ranked wrestlers as celebrity figures, identified by name and visual likeness, paralleled the actor-print tradition of the Edo theatrical world: both genres treated their subjects as named public figures whose identities supported a substantial commercial print market. Shuntei's involvement in sumo-e demonstrates the breadth of his commercial practice — alongside the warrior prints that constitute his historical reputation, he participated in the Katsukawa school's longstanding documentary sumo work. The Pinkowitz Family gift in 2025 brought a substantial body of sumo prints into the Met's permanent collection, including this Shuntei impression, allowing the museum to expand its representation of a genre that has been historically underrepresented in Western collections relative to actor and landscape prints.