A Playbill for the Ichimura Theater

Dated to 1715, this o-[oban](/glossary/oban) sumizuri-e is a playbill (banzuke) for the Ichimura-za, one of the three official kabuki theaters of Edo. Playbills served as the printed program for a kabuki production, listing the cast, the order of acts, and other essential information for the theater-going public. The Torii school held the contract for designing the Ichimura-za's playbills and posters, making Kiyomasu I's work in this format an extension of the workshop's everyday theatrical business. The composition arranges typographic information and illustrative elements in the layout conventions of early eighteenth-century theatrical printing, with bold contour lines providing graphic structure. As surviving Edo ephemera, playbills from this period offer historians of kabuki direct evidence of repertoire and casting. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this print.