The Actor Segawa Yujiro I as Oshichi in the play "Edo no Haru Meisho Soga," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the third month, 1773

Segawa Yujiro I, an onnagata related to the Segawa Kikunojo lineage, is shown by Torii Kiyomitsu in the role of the merchant's daughter Oshichi in Edo no Haru Meisho Soga, performed at the Ichimura-za in the third month of 1773. The Oshichi narrative - based on a notorious 1683 Edo incident in which the teenage Yaoya Oshichi was executed for arson committed to engineer a reunion with her lover - supplied Edo kabuki with one of its perennial tragic female roles. The historical Oshichi had been a fifteen-year-old daughter of a greengrocer (yaoya) whose temporary lodging at a temple, after a fire had destroyed her family's house, brought her into proximity with a young page boy named Kichisaburo; on returning home she set fire to her own house in an attempt to recreate the conditions that had brought them together, and was executed for arson at sixteen. The Segawa family of actors had supplied Edo kabuki with leading onnagata across multiple generations, and Segawa Yujiro I - taking the Oshichi role in this 1773 staging - belonged to the broader lineage. The play's third-month timing - the early spring slot, placed between the New Year openings and the higher-stakes summer productions - was a relatively minor slot in the Edo theatrical calendar, suitable for shorter productions or for restagings of perennial material like the Oshichi plays. The hosoban benizuri-e is held at the Art Institute of Chicago.