Kabuki Actor Nakamura Utaemon III as the Sword Master Kyōgoku Takumi, from the series Issei ichidai atari Kyōgen (Hits of a Lifetime of Kyōgen)

Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/76560), this 1825 yakusha-e by Shunkosai Hokushu shows Nakamura Utaemon III in the role of the sword master Kyogoku Takumi, from the series Issei ichidai atari Kyogen (Hits of a Lifetime of Kyogen). Nakamura Utaemon III, the dominant Kamigata tachiyaku of the Bunka-Bunsei era and the central figure of Osaka kabuki through the 1810s and 1820s, had by 1825 accumulated a substantial signature repertoire of roles that the series title acknowledged as the hits of a lifetime of kyogen. The Issei ichidai atari Kyogen project, conceived as a retrospective compilation of Utaemon III's celebrated parts, allowed Hokushu and the publishing workshops of Osaka to document the actor's mature interpretive achievement across a single coherent print series, with each sheet identifying a particular role within the actor's developed repertoire. The Kyogoku Takumi character belongs to the swordsman-instructor sub-type within the tachiyaku tradition, a role requiring the disciplined posture and grave bearing appropriate to a master of martial arts, with the formal upper garment and the swords thrust through the obi providing the visual identifying marks. Hokushu renders Utaemon III with the personal-likeness quality that defined mature Kamigata-e yakusha-e, the actor's distinctive features preserved beneath the role's makeup in the single-figure half-length composition that became standard for the artist's mature oban production. The kamigata-e workshop tradition of Osaka emphasized actor likeness over flattering convention, distinguishing the print from the broader Edo Utagawa-school yakusha-e of the same years. The Metropolitan impression preserves the careful color registration of premium Osaka workshop output. As one of the lifetime-of-kyogen series sheets, the print belongs to an important documentary moment in which the Kamigata ukiyo-e workshops codified the visual record of Utaemon III's career at the height of his interpretive authority, with Hokushu's series providing the template on which later Osaka yakusha-e portraitists would build.