The Actors Ichikawa Danjuro V as Hige no Ikyu, Nakamura Riko as Agemaki, and Ichikawa Ebizo as Agemaki's attendant in the play "Sukeroku Yukari no Edozakura" at the Nakamura Theater in the third month, 1784

This woodblock print by Torii Kiyonaga depicts a celebrated scene from the kabuki play Sukeroku Yukari no Edozakura, performed at the Nakamura Theater in the third month of 1784. The composition shows Ichikawa Danjuro V as Hige no Ikyu, Nakamura Riko as the courtesan Agemaki, and Ichikawa Ebizo as Agemaki's attendant. The impression is preserved in the Art Institute of Chicago. Sukeroku, a perennial favorite within the Ichikawa house's Jūhachiban repertory, gave the Torii school many of its most familiar [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) subjects, and as head of the school Kiyonaga inherited the workshop responsibility of designing prints around its leading actors. He sets the three figures across the sheet in a balanced triangular grouping, allowing the contrast between the menacing Hige no Ikyu, the courtesan Agemaki in full Yoshiwara regalia, and the attendant to register without crowding. Costume patterning is handled with the firm, decisive outlines characteristic of Torii school actor prints, while individual likenesses are kept legible enough to satisfy connoisseurs of contemporary kabuki casting. The print operates simultaneously as a souvenir of a specific performance and as a sustained graphic design, a combination at which Kiyonaga excelled. The Art Institute of Chicago documents this impression among its Kiyonaga actor prints, and the work testifies to the way Kiyonaga maintained the Torii school's traditional kabuki commitments alongside his transformative Edo [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) of the same decade. The Sukeroku subject, with its melodramatic confrontation in the Yoshiwara, gave him an ideal vehicle for multi-figure actor composition.