Actor Ichikawa Danjūrō IX as Fuwa Banzaemon in Fuwa, from the series The Eighteen Great Kabuki Plays (Kabuki Jūhachi-ban)

Fuwa Banzaemon, the swaggering otoko-date (chivalrous townsman) at the centre of the kabuki play Fuwa, appears here in the interpretation of Ichikawa Danjūrō IX. Fuwa, one of the canonical eighteen plays of the Ichikawa repertoire codified in 1832, dramatises a stylised street confrontation between the rival townsmen-warriors Fuwa Banzaemon and Nagoya Sanza, whose theatrical duel - originally drawn from a real seventeenth-century swordfight celebrated in Edo popular memory - became a recurring vehicle for the aragoto bravura of the Ichikawa house. The role required the dramatic stance work, elaborate costume of patterned hakama and decorated swords, and the characteristic mie (frozen poses) that defined Ichikawa-style male-role performance. Kiyosada's 1896 design preserves the late-Meiji staging of the role as Danjūrō IX performed it, with the actor's distinctive costume rendered in the Torii school's traditional bold contour vocabulary against a minimal ground that concentrates visual attention on pose and dress. The print belongs to the Kabuki Jūhachi-ban series produced jointly with Kiyosada's son Torii Kiyotada VII over 1895 and 1896 - an eighteen-plus-mokuroku set that constitutes the last major late-Edo-style codification of an actor-print series before the woodblock medium's commercial eclipse. The print is held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.