The Actor Nakamura Tomijuro I as Omi no Okane

Nakamura Tomijuro I, one of the leading onnagata (female-role specialists) of mid-eighteenth-century Edo kabuki, is shown here by Torii Kiyohiro in the female role of Omi no Okane - a legendary strong woman of medieval Japanese folklore credited with feats of physical strength normally associated with male warriors. The Omi no Okane legend descends from the Konjaku monogatari and other medieval narrative collections, and supplied Edo kabuki with a recurring subject in which an onnagata actor displayed both his cultivated feminine grace and the physical control required to perform the legendary woman's outsized strength. The hosoban benizuri-e of 1754 places the figure on the narrow vertical sheet (approximately 31 by 14 cm) that was the Torii school's default actor-print format. Kiyohiro, working as a designer of the third Torii generation, produced yakusha-e of this kind alongside the school's senior designers as part of the workshop's continuing supply of theatrical publicity to the three licensed Edo theatres. The benizuri-e palette of registered pink and green over a black key block places the print in the period before the introduction of full-colour nishiki-e printing in the mid-1760s by Suzuki Harunobu and his collaborators. Held by the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the Buckingham Collection.