The Actor Nakayama Tomisaburô as Ohisa

This Toshusai Sharaku yakusha-e shows the onnagata Nakayama Tomisaburo in the role of Ohisa. The image is accessible through ukiyo-e.org with a reference to an Art Institute of Chicago impression, and it sits with the rest of Sharaku's surviving designs within the publishing run he carried out for Tsutaya Juzaburo across 1794-1795. As an example of late eighteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e, the print belongs to the small but distinctive corpus that has defined how later collectors and scholars read yakusha-e.

The portrait is built around the conventions of the female role. Tomisaburo's face is drawn with painted brows lifted high on the forehead, the small reddened mouth, and the smooth pale complexion that the onnagata required, but Sharaku preserves the male anatomy under the makeup with characteristic restraint: the neck retains its width, and the line of the jaw is allowed its natural weight. The head tilts very slightly forward and the eyes are downcast, a pose that suggests Ohisa caught in a quiet moment of self-possession rather than addressing another character on stage.

The hair is bound in an elaborate female style appropriate to the part, with combs and pins carefully indicated through the keyblock's disciplined hairline work. Costume is described through firm collar and shoulder strokes with a restrained kimono pattern, the keyblock doing most of the descriptive labor and color held to soft pinks, muted reds, and patterned grounds. The dark mica background common to the Tsutaya premium series provides the hushed depth against which the white face reads almost as a relief medallion.

As an okubi-e operating within Sharaku's tightly compressed Edo ukiyo-e career, the sheet shows how completely he extended the analytical bust-portrait format to the full social and gender range of the kabuki stage. The reference impression is published through ukiyo-e.org.