Nakamura Sukegoro I holding a sword

An o-hosoban benizuri-e by Torii Kiyoshige showing the kabuki actor Nakamura Sukegoro I holding a sword, dating to around 1757. Nakamura Sukegoro I was one of the major aragoto (rough-business) actors of the Edo stage in the 1740s and 1750s, performing the bombastic, exaggerated male roles that the Ichikawa family had codified at the turn of the eighteenth century and that became one of the defining traditions of Edo kabuki across the period. The pose of an aragoto actor with sword in hand, captured in the dynamic theatrical stance for which the role-type was known, was a recurring subject across Torii-school yakusha-e. The o-hosoban (large narrow) format is a slightly enlarged version of the standard hosoban actor-print sheet, allowing the full figure of the warrior to occupy the vertical extent of the print with the sword carried at a dynamic angle across the upper register. The benizuri-e palette of registered pink and green dates the print to the period before the full-colour nishiki-e revolution of the mid-1760s. Held at the Art Institute of Chicago.