The actor Ichikawa Ebizo as Abe no Sadato in the guise of the itinerant monk Ryozan

This 1794 print by Toshusai Sharaku, held in the Art Institute of Chicago, shows the senior actor Ichikawa Ebizo (Ichikawa Danjuro V) in the role of the warrior Abe no Sadato disguised as the itinerant monk Ryozan. The sheet belongs to the okubi-e series Sharaku produced for the publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo, and is one of the most assertive character studies in the artist's compressed Edo ukiyo-e career.

The Ichikawa line specialized in aragoto, the rough-style heroic roles for which Edo audiences had a particular appetite, and Sharaku's handling of Ebizo translates that stage register into print. The actor's face fills the upper register of the sheet with massive brows, a heavy nose, and a wide, slightly opened mouth, the features deliberately exaggerated past comfortable beauty in order to record stage presence rather than studio idealization. The eyes are pointedly mismatched in their narrowing, an effect of the actor's performance and one of the small details that has long fascinated viewers of Sharaku's yakusha-e.

Beneath that intense head, the monk's disguise is signaled by simple, somber robes and a hood arrangement appropriate to a wandering ascetic, with the costume's quiet surface throwing the face into stronger relief. The dark mica ground that Tsutaya used for his luxury actor portraits gives the figure a near-sculptural depth and supports the impression of confronting the actor up close in a darkened auditorium.

As an example of late eighteenth-century yakusha-e, the print works on multiple levels: it advertises a specific role in a specific run of plays, it commemorates a star of the Ichikawa house, and it operates as a sophisticated piece of physiognomic portraiture in its own right. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves the dense black mica and crisp keyblock for which Sharaku's Edo ukiyo-e is now most prized.