Actor Arashi Kitsusaburō I as Chinzei Hachirō

This circa 1821 Osaka kamigata-e [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) by Nansenrō Shibakuni, held by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, depicts the leading Osaka male lead Arashi Kitsusaburō I in the role of Chinzei Hachirō, the stage name for the historical twelfth-century warrior Minamoto no Tametomo. The Chinzei Hachirō Tametomo role, drawn from medieval war chronicles and especially from the Hōgen monogatari, demanded the heroic-warrior gravitas that Kitsusaburō I, then near the end of his Osaka stage career (he died in 1821), brought to his late roles. The Tametomo character, a renowned archer who was exiled to Hachijōjima after the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156, was one of the great heroic-tragic roles of the kabuki repertoire and a frequent subject across Osaka and Edo print designers. Shibakuni's composition captures the role's warrior register through a tightly framed half-length view, with the inscription anchoring the print to the specific 1821 production and actor. The print is rendered as a color woodblock print ([nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e)) in ink and color on paper and exemplifies the mature kamigata-e idiom: facial focus, restrained palette, careful documentary inscription. The print belongs to the cluster of Shibakuni works in the William Sturgis Bigelow Collection at the MFA, and its 1821 date places it contemporary with the artist's celebrated British Museum portrait of the same actor in Igagoe dōchū sugoroku, jointly making Shibakuni's Kitsusaburō I depictions a small but coherent late-career documentary record of the star.