The Actors Yamashita Kinsaku I and Hayakawa Hatsuse as puppeteers in the play "Diary Kept on a Journey by Sea to Izu" ("Funadama Izu Nikki"), performed at the Nakamura Theater in the first month, 1725

A paired-figure hosoban urushi-e by Torii Kiyomasu II showing Yamashita Kinsaku I and Hayakawa Hatsuse in the roles of puppeteers in the play Diary Kept on a Journey by Sea to Izu (Funadama Izu Nikki), performed at the Nakamura-za in the first month of 1725. The portrayal of actors performing as puppeteers added another layer of theatrical meta-representation to a stage culture already saturated with cross-references between live kabuki performance and the parallel ningyo joruri (bunraku) puppet theatre. The two forms had developed in close interaction across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with plays migrating between live and puppet versions and audiences moving between the two media. A live actor performing as a puppeteer - manipulating the small dolls that were the visual focus of bunraku - was a doubly mediated theatrical conceit that allowed the kabuki performance to fold the rival medium into its own visual vocabulary. Hayakawa Hatsuse was an onnagata of the period whose career is preserved primarily through the Torii-school yakusha-e of his appearances; Yamashita Kinsaku I, the senior figure of the pair, was one of the leading onnagata of the late 1720s. The play title - Funadama Izu Nikki - refers to the funadama, the spirit of the ship invoked for safe passage on a sea voyage to the island of Izu, a recurring destination both for actual Edo travel and for theatrical pilgrimages of the Yoshitsune-and-Soga cycle. The first-month New Year's production at the Nakamura-za supplied the theatre with its calendrical opening. Dated 1725, held at the Art Institute of Chicago.