Ichimura Kamezô in the Role of Tachibanaya Hikosô

Ichimura Kamezo in the Role of Tachibanaya Hikoso, recorded on ukiyo-e.org from an Art Institute of Chicago impression, is a kabuki actor print by Suzuki Harunobu showing the performer Ichimura Kamezo in a townsman role from a contemporary play. While Harunobu is most often remembered for his Edo bijin-ga, he also designed yakusha-e — actor portraits — that participated in the same theatrical print economy. The figure is rendered with the slender proportions and clear contours typical of Harunobu's mature style, and the costume textile patterns are realized through the careful block-cutting and color registration that nishiki-e made possible. Roles like Tachibanaya Hikoso belonged to the wagoto, or "soft-style," tradition of romantic male leads, and Harunobu's gentle, almost feminized line is well suited to translating that stage register into a single sheet. Actor prints functioned simultaneously as souvenirs of a specific performance and as celebrity portraits to be collected and exchanged among theatergoers, and Suzuki Harunobu's contribution to the genre helped shape the visual conventions later refined by Shunsho and his pupils. The ukiyo-e.org record drawn from the Art Institute of Chicago preserves the design with sufficient fidelity to allow study of its line, color, and the specific stage moment to which it refers.