The Actor Ichikawa Danjuro V as Minamoto no Yoshiie, in the play "Date Nishiki Tsui no Yumitori," performed at the Morita Theater in the eleventh month, 1778 (?)

This 1778 woodblock print by Torii Kiyonaga depicts the actor Ichikawa Danjuro V in the role of Minamoto no Yoshiie in the play Date Nishiki Tsui no Yumitori, staged at the Morita Theater in Edo in the eleventh month of 1778. The impression is held by the Art Institute of Chicago. As hereditary head of the Torii school, Kiyonaga inherited the lineage's traditional commission of designing prints and posters for the Edo kabuki theaters, and this single-figure yakusha-e is a clear example of that workshop responsibility. Danjuro V, the leading aragoto specialist of his generation, is shown in the bold, plant-like pose appropriate to a heroic warrior, his robe charged with bold patterning suited to the Ichikawa house style. Kiyonaga handles the costume with a stronger graphic language than he uses for his contemporary bijin-ga: outlines are firmer, patterning denser, color contrasts sharper, all in keeping with Torii school conventions for actor prints. The work is dated and tied to a specific eleventh-month performance, which makes it useful for Edo theater historians as a record of casting and costume; the Art Institute of Chicago catalogues such prints as documentary artifacts of kabuki as well as art objects. Although Kiyonaga is now best remembered for transforming Edo bijin-ga in the 1780s, prints like this one show that he was simultaneously sustaining the Torii school's actor-print practice. His handling of Danjuro V here is direct and economical, with the figure dominating the sheet in a manner that recalls earlier Torii precedents.