The Actor Sawamura Sojuro I as Soga no Juro

Sawamura Sojuro I is depicted by Torii Kiyoshige in the role of Soga no Juro, one of the Soga brothers whose tenth-century vendetta against the murderer of their father supplied Edo kabuki with its single most-staged dramatic framework. Soga plays - typically performed during the New Year and spring seasons at all three Edo theatres - drew on a medieval epic cycle reworked across centuries of Japanese storytelling, and the Soga brothers (the elder Juro and younger Goro) became stock theatrical figures whose costumes, weapons, and dramatic situations were fixed by long performance convention. Sawamura Sojuro I, founder of the Sawamura acting line that would continue through multiple generations into the nineteenth century, was among the leading tachiyaku (male-role) actors of the Edo stage in the 1730s. Kiyoshige's hand-coloured urushi-e of about 1732 places the actor on a narrow hosoban sheet, using the hand-applied lacquer-black admixture characteristic of the urushi-e technique. The print is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago.