The Actor Matsumoto Koshiro II as Fuwa Banzaemon in the play "Monzukushi Nagoya Soga," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the first month, 1748

A precisely dated hand-coloured habahiro hashira-e by Torii Kiyoshige documenting Matsumoto Koshiro II as Fuwa Banzaemon in the play Monzukushi Nagoya Soga, performed at the Ichimura-za in the first month of 1748. Fuwa Banzaemon was a stock otoko-date (chivalrous townsman) figure of Edo kabuki, his name attached to a recurring archetype of the urban swordsman who appeared across multiple plays of the Soga and related cycles. The Matsumoto family of actors was one of the dynastic lineages of Edo kabuki, with successive bearers of the Matsumoto Koshiro name supplying the stage with leading tachiyaku specialists across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first-month opening at the Ichimura-za marked the start of the spring theatrical season, the second major calendrical occasion of the Edo theatre year after the eleventh-month kao-mise. The Torii workshop, then under Kiyonobu II's headship, supplied the publicity print run for the production; Kiyoshige's signed sheet records the casting in the documentary detail characteristic of Torii-school yakusha-e of the period. The wide habahiro hashira-e sheet and urushi-e technique date the print to a transitional moment immediately before the introduction of registered benizuri-e printing. Held at the Art Institute of Chicago.