The Actors Sawamura Sojuro III as Soga no Juro, Osagawa Tsuneyo II as Oiso no Tora, Azuma Tozo III as Miura Katagai, and Otani Tokuji I as Danzaburo, in the joruri "Chidorigake Koi no Tamaboko," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the first month, 1784

This Torii Kiyonaga print, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, documents a performance of the joruri Chidorigake Koi no Tamaboko at the Ichimura Theater in the first month of 1784, with Sawamura Sojuro III as Soga no Juro, Osagawa Tsuneyo II as the courtesan Oiso no Tora, Azuma Tozo III as Miura Katagai, and Otani Tokuji I as Danzaburo. First-month Edo kabuki bills traditionally drew upon the Soga revenge tradition—the story of the Soga brothers' revenge for their father's death—and adaptations such as this allied Soga heroes with the licensed pleasure quarter through the long-established pairing of Juro with the courtesan Oiso no Tora. Kiyonaga, as fourth-generation head of the Torii school, was responsible for the workshop's traditional output of actor prints and billboards for the licensed Edo theaters, and ensemble compositions of this kind allowed him to portray principal cast members within a single design. His figures stand in the broad-shouldered, calmly contoured proportions of his Tenmei-era manner, costumes patterned in measured repeats and family crests deployed so that audience members could identify each actor at a glance. The print sits within the substantial run of 1783–85 actor prints through which Kiyonaga reformulated Torii school yakusha-e in the language of his Edo bijin-ga. As a dated and named record of a specific Ichimura-za production, the impression contributes to the historical archive of late-eighteenth-century Edo theater preserved across the Art Institute of Chicago's Kiyonaga holdings.