The Actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Soga no Goro and Segawa Kikunojo III as Tsukisayo, in the play "Nanakusa Yosooi Soga," performed at the Nakamura Theater in the first month, 1782

The Actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Soga no Goro and Segawa Kikunojo III as Tsukisayo, in the play Nanakusa Yosooi Soga, performed at the Nakamura Theater in the first month of 1782, is a Torii Kiyonaga kabuki portrait that returns to the actor-print subject at the heart of the Torii school's traditional commercial role. Nanakusa Yosooi Soga belongs to the Soga revenge cycle, one of kabuki's most consistently performed New Year (kaomise) categories, and the pairing of Ichikawa Monnosuke II in the role of Soga no Goro with the leading onnagata Segawa Kikunojo III as Tsukisayo identifies a specific Nakamura-za production. Kiyonaga's handling preserves the firm contour and the disciplined fabric pattern characteristic of the Torii school's signboard tradition, but his figures carry the slightly elongated proportions and the integration of figure and setting that he had developed in his early-1780s bijin-ga. The print is a useful reminder that even at the height of his bijin-ga supremacy, Kiyonaga continued to design actor prints — the Torii school's older specialty — and that his innovations in figure drawing fed back into the school's theatrical work as well. The Art Institute of Chicago records this 1782 design among its Kiyonaga actor holdings.