Tsukushi no Gonroku, Arashi Kichisaburō

This 1804 Osaka kamigata-e yakusha-e by Shōkōsai Hanbei, preserved in the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at Waseda University (accession 016-0402), depicts the actor Arashi Kichisaburō (likely Arashi Kichisaburō II) in the role of Tsukushi no Gonroku. The print is dated firmly to 1804 in the Waseda catalog, placing it in the same Osaka kabuki season as the British Museum's companion print of the same actor and role (registration 2004,0327,0.3) and providing a paired record of Shōkōsai's documentary coverage of the Kadō Theatre's first-month production of Keisei hako denju. The Waseda 016 series is one of the two principal Japanese institutional collections of Shōkōsai's single-sheet prints (alongside Ritsumeikan's Z0170 series), and together they preserve roughly twenty sheets covering productions from approximately 1801 through 1808 — the period of Shōkōsai's most productive single-sheet output before his documented work tapers off around 1809. The composition is characteristic of his mature half-length template: a tightly cropped view of the actor in costume, careful inscription of role and actor names, restrained kamigata color treatment, and the artist's signature alongside the publisher's mark. The print is mirrored digitally at data.ukiyo-e.org/waseda/, and the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum's broader holdings give modern researchers the deepest single concentration of Osaka kamigata-e from the late Kansei and early Bunka periods available in any one collection.