The Actor Yamamura Ichitaro as Oichi in the play "Totsusaka-no-jo Tsuru no Sugomori," performed at the Nakamura Theater in the eleventh month, 1721

The Actor Yamamura Ichitaro as Oichi in the play Totsusaka-no-jo Tsuru no Sugomori, performed at the Nakamura Theater in the eleventh month, 1721, documents the kaomise opening of the 1721 Nakamuraza season in the standard Torii-school [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) idiom. The kaomise or face-showing programs of the eleventh month presented the year's contracted casts to the public in elaborately staged productions, and the Tsuru no Sugomori (Crane's Nest) sub-title drew on the auspicious crane imagery that the kaomise season cultivated as part of its celebratory framing. Yamamura Ichitaro, a developing onnagata of the early Kyoho era, here appears as Oichi, a female character drawn from the historical and legendary register that mixed romance with the political setting of the totsusaka or feudal-house drama. Torii Kiyotomo, working as a less-documented member of the second-generation Torii circle alongside Kiyomasu II, Kiyotada, and Kiyoharu, draws the standing figure in the disciplined bold contour that the Torii workshop established for its early-eighteenth-century onnagata portraits, the line restrained from the aragoto mode and yet still carrying the principal expressive weight of the design against the lightly inked ground. The tan-e mode of early Torii production, with selective application of orange-red tan pigment to costume and accessory details, supplies the color emphasis characteristic of the workshop's Kyoho-era commercial output. The [hosoban](/glossary/hosoban) or wide-bordered tate-e format frames the actor full-length, with patterned robe motifs supplying the principal visual interest in the absence of an elaborated setting. As a working member of the Torii second generation, Kiyotomo produced such commemorative portraits in direct service to the kabuki houses, with the print functioning as both performance souvenir and ongoing publicity for the actor's developing career. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression (source_url https://www.artic.edu/artworks/19437) as a representative document of the kaomise onnagata portrait in the Kiyotomo hand at the height of the early Kyoho era.