The Actor Sanogawa Mangiku I as Sanada, the daughter of the spinner Itoya, in the play "Hiragana Yomeiri Izu Nikki," performed at the Nakamura Theater in the eleventh month, 1718

Sanogawa Mangiku I, one of the leading onnagata (female-role specialists) of early eighteenth-century Edo kabuki, is shown here by Torii Kiyomasu II in the role of Sanada - identified in the print's title as the daughter of the spinner Itoya - in the play Hiragana Yomeiri Izu Nikki, performed at the Nakamura-za in the eleventh month of 1718. The Hiragana Yomeiri Izu Nikki cycle was one of the Edo theatre's recurring dramatic vehicles, a wedding-and-journey-narrative whose various adaptations supplied actors with vehicles across the eighteenth century. Sanogawa Mangiku I was a star of the period whose career bridged the founding generation of Edo kabuki and the established mid-Edo theatrical world that would follow; his name appears repeatedly across Torii-school yakusha-e of the late 1710s and 1720s, attesting both to his popularity and to the centrality of the onnagata role in Edo theatrical publicity. The eleventh-month kao-mise (face-showing) production at which this play opened marked the formal start of the Edo theatre's annual programme - the most consequential calendrical event of the theatrical year. The o-oban tan-e format - a large sheet hand-coloured with orange tan pigment, sometimes supplemented with yellow and green - was one of the principal media of Torii-school yakusha-e in this period, allowing the elaborate costumes and accessories of the onnagata's stage presence to be displayed at scale. The print is dated 1718 and is held at the Art Institute of Chicago. The print's identification with both actor and specific role-and-play, supplied by the Torii workshop's documentary practice, makes it a valuable primary source for the reconstruction of Edo theatrical history.