The actor Onoe Kikugoro VI playing the role of Kosho in Kagami Jishi

The print depicts Onoe Kikugoro VI as Kosho in Kagami Jishi, the lion-dance work that became one of his signature roles across the early Showa decades. The character is the young attendant who, performing before the shogunate, picks up the ceremonial shishigashira lion mask and is gradually possessed by its spirit -- a role that requires the actor to inhabit two distinct registers within a single dance. Ota's portrait likely captures the transitional moment when the mask is raised and the attendant's restrained posture begins to break under the lion's emerging presence. The composition follows the yakusha-e convention of isolating the figure against a flat ground, with the patterned furisode kimono in registered color blocks against the carved white mane of the wooden mask. Kikugoro VI's interpretation of Kagami Jishi was widely studied by serious theatergoers, and Ota's print -- one of his repeated returns to this actor -- documents a performance tradition that defined onnagata-influenced dance in his generation.