Kabuki Actor Ichikawa Ebijūrō I as Tōken (China Dog) Jūbei, in the play Benimurasaki ai de someage (Red and Purple, Rich Dyes of Osaka)

Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/76557), this 1822 yakusha-e by Shunkosai Hokushu shows Ichikawa Ebijuro I in the role of Token (China Dog) Jubei in the play Benimurasaki ai de someage (Red and Purple, Rich Dyes of Osaka), a Kamigata kabuki production staged in the Dotombori theatres of Osaka during the early Bunsei era. Ichikawa Ebijuro I, originally an Edo actor who had relocated to Osaka and become one of the leading tachiyaku of the Kamigata stage in the late 1810s and 1820s, here appears in the rogue-warrior role of Token Jubei, a character whose nickname Token (literally China Dog) signaled an outsider toughness that the Osaka kabuki cultivated in its distinctive otokodate or chivalrous-commoner repertoire. Hokushu, the dominant Osaka yakusha-e specialist of the late Bunsei era and the teacher of Shunbaisai Hokuei, renders Ebijuro I with the personal-likeness quality that defined mature Kamigata-e portraiture, the actor's distinctive features preserved beneath the role's makeup and the specific warrior costume conventions of the Token Jubei character rendered with documentary attention. The single-figure half-length oban composition isolates the actor against a plain ground to focus attention on facial expression, costume detail, and the characteristic bearing of the rogue-hero role. The kamigata-e workshop tradition of Osaka, distinct from Edo ukiyo-e in its emphasis on individual likeness over flattering convention and in its more restrained color palette dominated by gray, brown, and indigo tones, here finds one of its mature expressions in Hokushu's mid-career production. The Metropolitan impression preserves the careful color registration that distinguished premium Osaka workshop output. Working at the height of his career across the 1810s and 1820s, Hokushu defined the visual register for the Osaka theatrical world of his generation and provided the foundation on which his pupil Hokuei would build the great 1830s portrait sequences of Arashi Rikan II and Nakamura Utaemon III.