The Actor Nakayama Tomisaburô as Ohisa

This Toshusai Sharaku [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) shows the onnagata Nakayama Tomisaburo in the role of Ohisa. The image is accessible through [ukiyo-e](/glossary/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.