The Actor Segawa Kikunojo II as Shizuka Gozen (?)

The Actor Segawa Kikunojo II as Shizuka Gozen (?) is an early color woodblock print designed by Torii Kiyonaga around 1762, when the artist was still a young pupil within the Torii school of woodblock designers. The Torii line had specialized for nearly a century in posters and prints for Edo's kabuki theaters, and this hosoban (narrow vertical) actor print belongs squarely to that family tradition. Segawa Kikunojo II was one of the leading onnagata, or specialists in female roles, of the mid-eighteenth century, and Shizuka Gozen—the celebrated dancer and beloved of the warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune—was among the most prestigious heroines an onnagata could portray. Shizuka appears in a number of Edo dance dramas, often shown performing the suzu kagura with hand bells, recalling the legendary dance she was forced to give before Yoritomo at Tsurugaoka Hachimangū. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this impression, identifies the print as a benizuri-e or early limited-color sheet, dating from the years just before full polychrome printing took hold in Edo. The figure stands tall and frontal, costume patterned with the simple two- or three-color overprinting characteristic of the moment, the actor's mon and identifying inscriptions arranged at the sides. For modern viewers, the sheet documents the formative phase of Kiyonaga's career, before his bijin-ga reputation overshadowed his theatrical work, and it preserves the kind of Torii-school yakusha-e that linked Edo audiences to specific performances of beloved classical heroines.