The Actor Sanjo Kantaro II as Oshichi in the play "Nanakusa Fukki Soga," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the first month, 1718

This hand-colored o-oban tan-e is firmly dated to the 1718 first-month staging of Nanakusa Fukki Soga at the Ichimura-za, where Sanjo Kantaro II performed the female role of Oshichi. The play was another variant on the perennial Soga revenge cycle, adapted with the addition of the historical figure Yaoya Oshichi, a young woman whose tragic story had passed into popular legend after she was executed in 1683 for arson. The larger o-oban format gives Kiyonobu room to elaborate the costume in considerably more detail than the standard hosoban allows: the long trailing kimono cascades across the sheet in heavy folds, hand-colored in vivid tan-orange and yellow. The print is one of the late-career documentary actor portraits for which Kiyonobu is best known, tying a specific actor to a specific role at a specific theatre in a specific month. From the Art Institute of Chicago.