The actor Nakamura Utaemon VI playing the role of the shirabyôshi Hanako in the famous dance Musume Dôjôji

Utaemon VI inherited Musume Dojoji as a defining onnagata showpiece, and Ota's portrait depicts him as the shirabyoshi Hanako in one of the dance's nine costume changes -- likely the early sequences in the formal long-sleeved furisode, before the role's serpentine nature emerges. The shirabyoshi character carries the dance's central deception: she presents herself at the Dojoji temple as a court dancer to participate in the ceremony for the new bell, but she is the vengeful spirit of the woman who once destroyed the original. Ota's composition emphasizes the precise hand position and tilt of the head that mark a particular moment in the choreography, isolating Utaemon's onnagata stance against an unmodulated ground. The print uses [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation in the kimono pattern blocks to suggest the layered silk of the costume. Within Ota's body of work, his repeated returns to Utaemon VI document an extended artistic relationship with the leading onnagata of the postwar Tokyo stage.