The Actors Ichikawa Danjuro II as Onio Shinzaemon and Ichikawa Masugoro as Soga no Goro in the play "Furiwake-gami Hatsugai Soga," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the first month, 1735

The Actors Ichikawa Danjuro II as Onio Shinzaemon and Ichikawa Masugoro as Soga no Goro in the play Furiwake-gami Hatsugai Soga, performed at the Ichimura Theater in the first month, 1735, documents a Soga-cycle New Year program at the Ichimuraza in which two members of the Ichikawa lineage appeared together in a dual portrait. Ichikawa Danjuro II, then in the late phase of a career that had defined Edo aragoto across three decades, paired with Ichikawa Masugoro, his adopted son and the future Ichikawa Ebizo II, who would in time inherit the Danjuro line as Ichikawa Danjuro III. The Furiwake-gami Hatsugai Soga belongs to the standard Soga-vendetta rotation that the three licensed Edo theaters observed each first month, with the title's furiwake-gami or parted-hair reference signaling the youthful coming-of-age aspect of the Soga brothers' early lives. The role of Onio Shinzaemon belongs to the kataki or rogue category that the Danjuro line had codified within the aragoto register, while Soga no Goro Tokimune is the younger of the vendetta brothers whose impassioned youthful fury drives the cycle's emotional intensity. Torii Kiyonobu I, founder of the Torii school of yakusha-e, draws the two standing figures in the disciplined bold contour he had codified for sumizuri-e production, with the muscular hyotan-ashi mimizu-gaki line giving both figures their aragoto weight against the lightly inked ground. The hosoban or wide-bordered tate-e format frames the paired figures, with patterned costume motifs supplying the principal visual interest. As founder of the Torii yakusha-e tradition, Kiyonobu produced such commemorative dual portraits in direct service to the Ichikawa lineage whose visual register the Torii workshop had been instrumental in defining. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression (source_url https://www.artic.edu/artworks/86957) as a record of the Ichikawa father-son Soga dual portrait at the height of the 1730s Edo kabuki year.