The actor Ichikawa Sadanji II as Narukami Uejin

Narukami is one of the kabuki jûhachiban, the eighteen plays canonized as the Ichikawa family's signature repertoire, and the priest Narukami—seduced by Princess Taema and roused to apocalyptic fury—belongs to its aragoto register. Ichikawa Sadanji II, a leading actor of the early twentieth-century kabuki reform movement, brought a psychologically modulated reading to such broad characters, and Shunsen's portrait registers that interpretive intelligence in the painted features. The composition presents Sadanji at bust length, the priestly black robe rendered in sumi-saturated blocks, the kumadori makeup articulated through registered red and indigo lines on the cheeks and brow. The print belongs to Shunsen's sustained engagement with the actors of the Tokyo kabuki houses, produced in collaboration with publisher Watanabe Shôzaburô and his atelier of carvers and printers. The image carries forward the aragoto portraiture tradition established by Torii Kiyonobu and the early Katsukawa school.