The Actors Segawa Kikujiro I as Oshichi and Sanjo Kantaro II as Kichisaburo in the play "Shochikubai Kongen Soga," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the third month, 1732

Dated to 1732 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago, this hand-coloured urushi-e [hosoban](/glossary/hosoban) print by Nishimura Shigenobu depicts the kabuki actors Segawa Kikujiro I and Sanjo Kantaro II in their roles as the lovers Oshichi and Kichisaburo in the play Shochikubai Kongen Soga (The Pine, Bamboo, and Plum: Origin of the Soga), performed at the Ichimura Theater in the third month of 1732. The Oshichi narrative, drawn from the historical tragedy of the greengrocer's daughter Oshichi who set fire to her family's Edo home in 1683 in the desperate hope of reuniting with her lover at a nearby temple, was a perennial of early-eighteenth-century kabuki and a recurrent subject in actor prints. The Soga brothers' revenge tale, with which the Oshichi narrative was here ingeniously cross-pollinated, provided the formal armature for the play and the connection to the auspicious sho-chiku-bai (pine, bamboo, plum) winter symbolism in the title. Shigenobu's hosoban format, the narrow vertical sheet developed for affordable single-actor prints, allows the two performers to stand in mirrored balance across the composition, with their elaborate stage kimono and the carefully observed gestural relationships demonstrating the early-Kyoho actor-print idiom. The urushi-e finish, achieved by enriching the black areas with a glue and lacquer mixture that produced a glossy, jet-black surface, was a hallmark technique of the 1720s and 1730s Edo print trade, and Shigenobu's command of the technique places him among the more refined practitioners of his generation. The Art Institute of Chicago example provides one of the strongest surviving documents of Shigenobu's engagement with the 1732 kabuki season and with the Segawa Kikujiro I performance tradition.