Nakamura Nakazo I as Watanabe no Tsuna

Held by the Cleveland Museum of Art and dated 1781, this Katsukawa Shunzan color woodblock print depicts the actor Nakamura Nakazō I in the role of Watanabe no Tsuna, the senior member of the Shitennō or Four Heavenly Kings who served Minamoto no Yorimitsu (Raikō). The print is the right sheet (1921.314.c) of a triptych assembling three Yorimitsu Heavenly Kings into a contemporary night-watch parody composition. Watanabe no Tsuna is the most celebrated of Yorimitsu's warriors in classical literature: he is the hero of the Rashōmon legend in which he severs the arm of a demon at the gate of Rashōmon and brings it back to Yorimitsu's residence, the demon later disguising itself as Tsuna's aunt to recover the limb. Nakamura Nakazō I (1736–1790) was one of the great villain specialists of the eighteenth-century Edo stage, and his casting as the heroic Tsuna places this 1781 production within the season's actor-against-type opportunities. Shunzan's portrait follows the standard Katsukawa-school documentary convention of individualized likeness combined with role-specific costume, and the print completes Cleveland's preserved triptych group — one of the most substantial early Shunzan holdings in any museum collection and an essential reference for the study of his musha-e mode at the start of his documented career.