The Actors Nakamura Riko I as Tanbaya Otsuma and Ichikawa Yaozo III as Furuteya Hachirobei, in the joruri "Sakamachi Yoi no Yotsutsuji," performed at the Nakamura Theater in the third month, 1785

This Torii Kiyonaga print in the Art Institute of Chicago documents the joruri Sakamachi Yoi no Yotsutsuji, performed at the Nakamura Theater in the third month of 1785, with Nakamura Riko I as Tanbaya Otsuma and Ichikawa Yaozo III as Furuteya Hachirobei. The work falls within the so-called sewamono tradition of contemporary domestic drama, whose plots—often centered on lovers driven to crisis by debt or jealousy—were performed as kabuki adaptations of puppet joruri scripts. By the mid-1780s, Kiyonaga had assumed full responsibility for the Torii school's longstanding obligation to provide actor prints to the licensed Edo theaters, and dual-figure compositions of this kind allowed him to focus on the relationship between principal players in a contemporary play. He renders the pair in his characteristic Edo bijin-ga manner—tall, broad-shouldered, calmly proportioned, set against a minimal ground so that costume and gesture carry the meaning. Crests on the robes identify the actors, while the patterning differentiates the courtesan-like Otsuma from the merchant Hachirobei. The print is a representative example of how Kiyonaga's reformulation of yakusha-e brought it into close visual alignment with his bijin-ga: even when the subjects are theatrical roles, the figural language is that of elegant Edo townspeople. As a specifically dated record of a Nakamura-za performance, the impression also contributes to the documentary record of mid-1780s Edo kabuki preserved through the Torii school's prints.