Onoe Matsusuke I as Matsushita Mikinojō in the Play "Katakiuchi noriyaibanashi"

This 1794 okubi-e by Toshusai Sharaku, held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts the actor Onoe Matsusuke I in the role of Matsushita Mikinojo in the kabuki play Katakiuchi Noriyaibanashi (A Medley of Tales of Revenge). The print belongs to the body of [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) Sharaku designed for the publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo and is one of several surviving images that document the same theatrical run within Sharaku's short Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) career.

Matsushita Mikinojo is a samurai role within the play's revenge plot, and Sharaku's portrait conveys the character's contained moral attention. Matsusuke I is drawn with a long, lean face, narrow eyes set under sober brows, and a mouth held in a tight, level line. The line of the jaw is allowed its natural weight, and the small wrinkles along the nose and at the corner of the mouth are kept on the surface of the print rather than smoothed away. The head is held very slightly forward, the gaze directed off-axis at an unseen interlocutor; the entire portrait reads as a study of a man whose role demands silence and inwardness more than display.