The Actor Sanogawa Ichimatsu I as Ushiwakamaru in the play "Kiichi Hogen Shinanguruma," performed at the Morita Theater in the eleventh month, 1754

Dated 1754 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago, this hosoban benizuri-e is the left sheet of a triptych depicting Sanogawa Ichimatsu I as Ushiwakamaru in the play Kiichi Hogen Shinanguruma, performed at the Morita Theater in the eleventh month of 1754. Ichimatsu, the same wakashu-gata star who gave his name to the checkered ichimatsu pattern, plays Ushiwakamaru, the boyhood name of the great twelfth-century warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune. The play Kiichi Hogen Shinanguruma was a Yoshitsune-cycle drama in which the young hero studied military arts in the household of the strategist Kiichi Hogen and stole the secret military manual that would underpin his subsequent victories. The eleventh-month staging at the Morita was a kao-mise (face-showing) production, the formal beginning of the kabuki theatrical year. The benizuri-e palette and hosoban format are standard for the period, and the specificity of date, actor, role, play, and theater makes the print valuable to kabuki historians. The Chicago impression is a late work in Shigenaga's career, made roughly two years before his death.