The Actor Anegawa Chiyosaburo from Kyoto

Dated 1734 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago, this hand-coloured urushi-e hosoban by Nishimura Shigenobu depicts the Kyoto actor Anegawa Chiyosaburo, a member of the Anegawa kabuki lineage active in the Kamigata (Kyoto-Osaka) theatrical world of the early-Kyoho era. The print's identification of the actor's Kyoto origin signals the interregional circulation of kabuki talent between the eastern capital (Edo) and the western capitals (Kyoto and Osaka), a circulation that prints and playbills helped to publicise and that gave Edo audiences ongoing access to Kamigata performers and their distinctive performance traditions. Shigenobu's hosoban composition arranges the standing figure within the narrow vertical sheet with the careful gestural attention that the single-actor print format invited, the elaborate stage kimono and the actor's stylised pose documenting the visual conventions of mid-1730s actor portraiture. The urushi-e finish, with its glossy black areas enriched by the glue-and-lacquer process and the hand-applied beni and mineral pigment scheme, demonstrates Shigenobu's command of the most refined hand-colouring vocabulary of the period. The Art Institute of Chicago example contributes to the documentation of the 1734 kabuki season and of the cross-cultural relationships between Edo and Kamigata kabuki at a foundational moment in the actor-print tradition.