Matsumoto Koshiro III as Kusunoki Bokon and Sawamura Kijuro as Omori Hikoshichi in the Scene from a Drama (Sandaime Matsumoto Koshiro no Kusunoki Bokon to Sawamura Kijuro no Omori Hikoshichi)

Matsumoto Koshiro III as Kusunoki Bokon and Sawamura Kijuro as Omori Hikoshichi is a color woodblock print designed by Torii Kiyonaga around 1762, when the young artist was still working closely within the Torii school's long-established specialty of kabuki actor prints. Matsumoto Koshiro III and Sawamura Kijuro were popular performers of mid-eighteenth-century Edo, and Kusunoki Bokon (a vengeful spirit linked to the loyalist hero Kusunoki Masashige) and Omori Hikoshichi belong to the cycle of dramas dramatizing fourteenth-century warrior history. The scene typically called for charged confrontation, often staged on a moonlit road, where the warrior Hikoshichi carries a woman on his back only to discover her supernatural identity. Kiyonaga's hosoban print presents the two actors in characteristic mie poses, their costumes patterned with family crests that identify them to the audience. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this impression, identifies the sheet as a benizuri-e or early limited-color print, dating from the years immediately before full polychrome printing transformed Edo's prints in 1765. The palette relies on a few overprinted colors—pinks, greens, yellows—against the patterned ground of costume and the black of formal printed inscriptions at top and side. For modern viewers, the print preserves the moment just before Kiyonaga's career would pivot toward bijin-ga, and it documents how thoroughly the young Torii heir mastered the conventions of yakusha-e at the school's traditional theatrical heart.