A Celebration of Actors (Yakusha mono iwai)

This 1784 illustrated book in two volumes, Yakusha mono iwai (役者物祝, A Celebration of Actors), is one of his earliest and most consequential works and a foundational document of Osaka kabuki iconography. Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession JIB173a, b), the work comprises woodblock-printed portraits of forty-nine kabuki actors in their famous roles, each accompanied by a poem and identified not by stage name but by yago (house name) and haiku pen name, a convention that signaled the book's address to a knowledgeable Osaka audience of theater connoisseurs and fan-club members. The two volumes together (volume a: sixteen leaves; volume b: thirteen leaves) constitute the single most important early Osaka publication on kabuki acting and one of the earliest documents of the regional yakusha-e tradition that would mature commercially over the following half century. The book's monochrome woodblock printing reflects the pre-color phase of Osaka kabuki publishing, the period before he led the local market into nishiki-e single-sheet print production in 1791-1793. The book is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession JIB173a, b) as two illustrated volumes of woodblock-printed pages, with volume a containing sixteen leaves and volume b containing thirteen leaves, each leaf approximately 22.9 by 15.9 centimeters. The convention of identifying actors by yago (house name) and haiku pen name rather than stage name marks the book as a document for connoisseurs already familiar with the Osaka stage rather than a general-audience souvenir, and his choice to organize the forty-nine actors around their celebrated roles reflects the Kamigata yakusha-e commitment to documenting specific theatrical interpretations that would define the entire subsequent tradition.