Ichikawa Danjūrō II in the Scene "Wait a Moment" (Shibaraku)

A second tan-e (orange-red print) by Torii Kiyotada portraying Ichikawa Danjuro II in the iconic Shibaraku ('Wait a Moment') role established by his father Ichikawa Danjuro I at the turn of the eighteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum catalogue dates this sheet to circa 1715, which would place it among Kiyotada's earliest works - and indeed at the very beginning of the period during which the Met records him as active (c. 1720-50). The early date and the tan-e technique - hand-applied red lead pigment over the black-line key block, the simplest and earliest form of polychrome [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) - suggest that the print may belong to the formative phase of Kiyotada's career, when he was still working in the hand-coloured techniques pioneered by Kiyonobu I and Kiyomasu I. The Shibaraku role demanded the most extreme of the aragoto stagings, with the warrior figure costumed in oversized robes painted with the persimmon-red kakishibu colour that was Danjuro's trademark, his face made up in the codified bold red lines (kumadori) that signalled superhuman virtue, and his hair arranged in the bristling shaggu style that capped the bravura visual effect. The Torii school's prints of Shibaraku performances are among the principal visual sources for the staging conventions of early-eighteenth-century Edo kabuki, and Kiyotada's depiction belongs to the formative phase of that visual tradition. The print is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.