Actor Nakamura Shikan as Bunya no Yasuhide

This undated Victoria and Albert Museum print by Shunbaisai Hokuei depicts Nakamura Shikan (later Nakamura Utaemon IV) in the role of Bunya no Yasuhide, one of the rokkasen (six poetic immortals) of the Heian classical tradition. Bunya no Yasuhide was a ninth-century courtier-poet whose verse appears in the early imperial anthologies and whose canonical inclusion among the six poetic immortals secured his lasting cultural memory. The role would have featured in one of the Rokkasen-suite of kabuki plays dramatising the legendary Heian poets that the Kamigata theatres favoured in the Tenpō period, often staged as a connected sequence of dance-pieces in which a single onnagata-trained leading actor performed all six poets through hayagawari rapid costume change (V&A item O419936, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O419936). The present sheet, with its companion portraits of Shikan in the other rokkasen roles (Ariwara no Narihira, Ono no Komachi, Bunya no Yasuhide, monk Kisen, Ōtomo no Kuronushi, and priest Henjō, several of which are also held by the V&A in this Hokuei grouping), suggests an integrated print-series response to a particular Kamigata Rokkasen production. Hokuei depicts Shikan in the formal Heian-court costume of the role, with the tall eboshi headdress and the patterned over-robe of the aristocratic poet, the actor's personal likeness preserved beneath the makeup. The composition occupies the standard mature half-length format against a plain background, the attention focused on the dignified expression and the precise textile rendering. The Rokkasen series within the Hokuei oeuvre is a particularly coherent example of the Kamigata-e workshop's tendency to issue actor portraits in coordinated narrative sets.