The Actor Segawa Kikunojo II as the courtesan Umegae in the play "Hiragana Seisuiki," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the first month, 1764

The Actor Segawa Kikunojo II as the Courtesan Umegae in the play "Hiragana Seisuiki," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the first month of 1764, in the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of Suzuki Harunobu's documented yakusha-e designs. Segawa Kikunojo II was among the most admired onnagata, or female-role specialists, of his generation, and Harunobu portrays him in character as the courtesan Umegae from a popular jidai-mono history play. The image fixes a precise stage moment: the first-month production at the Ichimura-za in 1764, important to collectors as both a record of the actor's celebrated performance and a fashion document of the season. Harunobu's slender, sweetly featured line treats the male actor as fully convincing in a woman's body, in step with the conventions of onnagata performance and the elegant feminine proportions of his own Edo bijin-ga. The print pre-dates the 1765 nishiki-e calendar boom, yet already demonstrates the careful color separations and patterned textiles that would soon become the polychrome standard. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves the design as both a kabuki document and an example of Suzuki Harunobu's early authority over actor portraiture, before that genre passed to specialists like Shunsho later in the decade.