Actors Arashi Rikan as the Boatman Higuchi no Jirō and Iwai Shijaku as his wife, Oyoshi

This undated Victoria and Albert Museum double portrait by Shunbaisai Hokuei depicts Arashi Rikan II as the boatman Higuchi no Jirō and Iwai Shijaku I as his wife Oyoshi, the central couple from the jidaimono play Hirakana seisuiki (A Vernacular Account of the Rise and Fall) or a closely related Genpei-cycle drama. Higuchi no Jirō Kanemitsu is a historical Heian-period warrior of the Kiso Yoshinaka faction in the Genpei War whose loyalty to his slain lord forms the moral structure of the play; in the celebrated Sakaro (oar-pulling) scene he disguises himself as a boatman to track down those responsible for his master's death, with his identity eventually revealed through his expert reverse-rowing technique. The pairing of Higuchi and his wife Oyoshi was a major dramatic focus of the play's onstage staging and naturally suggested itself as a double-portrait subject for the Kamigata-e workshop (V&A item O419935, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O419935). Hokuei depicts Rikan II in the rough work-clothes of the boatman disguise, with the towel headband and casually tied obi characteristic of the role, paired with Shijaku I as Oyoshi in the dignified samurai-household-wife costume. The relative scale and gestural orientation of the two figures conveys the dramatic relationship at the play's emotional center. The Victoria and Albert impression preserves the careful color registration required to render two distinct costume patterns against a unified background, demonstrating the Kamigata-e workshop's technical command of complex multi-figure compositional challenges.