The Actors Ichikawa Ebizo I as Miura Osuke and Onoe Kikugoro I as a Yujo

An oban benizuri-e by Torii Kiyohiro of 1754 depicting the actors Ichikawa Ebizo I in the role of Miura Osuke and Onoe Kikugoro I as a yujo (courtesan), in a paired-figure composition that showcases the Torii workshop's mid-century treatment of two-actor scenes. Miura Osuke was a stock male-role of Edo kabuki drawn from the medieval Soga vengeance cycle, and yujo (literally 'play woman') was the formal Edo term for women of the licensed pleasure quarters who appeared as standard female-role characters across the eighteenth-century kabuki repertoire. The pairing of a male warrior-type with a courtesan was one of the recurring dramatic configurations of Edo theatre, supplying both the romantic and the social-economic tensions on which the plots typically turned. The oban format (approximately 38 by 26 cm) provided Kiyohiro with roughly twice the working surface of the standard hosoban actor-print sheet, allowing the two-figure composition to develop without compressing either actor into the narrow vertical strip that single-figure hosoban prints required. The benizuri-e palette of pink and green dates the print to the period immediately before the introduction of full-colour nishiki-e printing around 1765. Held by the Art Institute of Chicago, where it forms part of the most extensive Western holding of Kiyohiro's signed work.