The Actor Onoye Matsusuke as a Ronin

This Toshusai Sharaku okubi-e portrays the actor Onoye Matsusuke in the role of a ronin, a masterless samurai of the kind whose moral situation provided so much of the dramatic energy of Edo kabuki. The print is held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; its 1749 date is an older curatorial entry that predates the broader scholarship now placing Sharaku's actor portraits firmly within his 1794-1795 publishing run for Tsutaya Juzaburo in Edo.

Sharaku draws Matsusuke with characteristic frankness. The face is long and lean, the nose strong, the mouth held in a quiet, tight line, and the eyes narrowed beneath drawn brows. There is no softening of the lines along the cheek or around the mouth; instead the artist allows the character's situation - dishonored, watchful, perpetually under threat - to inform every contour of the head. The portrait avoids the warrior swagger of the more flamboyant ronin types and reads instead as a study of a man whose pride has cooled into a contained alertness.