The Actor Segawa Kikunojo, 1690–1749 with Drawn Sword and Helmet

Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this woodblock print depicts the kabuki actor Segawa Kikunojo I (1690-1749) with a drawn sword and helmet, capturing the star in a martial pose appropriate to one of the male warrior roles he performed during his long career. Segawa Kikunojo I was one of the most celebrated Edo actors of the first half of the eighteenth century, equally accomplished in male warrior roles and in the female onnagata roles for which he became most famous late in his career. Shigenaga's portrait, made during the actor's lifetime, documents the public image of one of the great kabuki stars of the period. The print is rendered with ink and color on paper, with the color hand-applied in the beni-e or urushi-e tradition standard for actor portraits in the 1730s and 1740s. The drawn sword and helmet motif anchors the print in the dramatic vocabulary of warrior kabuki, distinct from the more domestic and bijin-inflected vocabulary of onnagata work. The Metropolitan impression preserves the keyblock line and applied color in usable state and is among the museum's significant holdings of Shigenaga, complementing the larger group of his prints in the Art Institute of Chicago.