The Actor Ichimura Uzaemon XV as Naozamurai, from the series “Collection of Portraits by Shunsen (Shunsen nigao shu)"

Natori Shunsen's 1925 portrait of the actor Ichimura Uzaemon XV as Naozamurai, from the series Shunsen nigao shu (Collection of Portraits by Shunsen), depicts one of the great early twentieth-century kabuki stars in the title role of Kataoka Naojiro, the romantic outlaw of Kawatake Mokuami's late Edo masterpiece. Ichimura Uzaemon XV was admired above all for nimaime roles such as Naozamurai, in which a handsome but morally compromised hero balances tenderness toward his lover with the desperation of a fugitive existence. Shunsen captures the actor at an instant of arrested feeling, the head slightly inclined and the lips faintly parted, the brows lifted in a way that suggests both world-weariness and lingering affection. As in the rest of the Shunsen nigao shu series, the design follows the okubi-e tradition of large-head actor portraits, but the visual language is distinctly modern, with carefully modulated bokashi shading in the skin, a flat dark ground that throws the figure into relief, and the closely observed costume details that distinguish shin-hanga printmaking. The collaboration with the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo's atelier is evident in the cleanness of the registration and the saturated, even ink layers. The Art Institute of Chicago, which preserves this impression alongside other sheets from the series, makes it possible to trace Shunsen's sustained study of leading kabuki performers across the mid-1920s. The print is a benchmark example of how yakusha-e was reanimated within the shin-hanga movement as a vehicle for both portraiture and theater history.