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.

The costume is restrained, in keeping with the social state of a ronin: simple robes without the prominent crests and elaborate patterning of a senior samurai role, the shoulder line drawn through firm, economical keyblock cuts. Hair is dressed in the male warrior style with sakayaki shaved at the front and a topknot bound tightly behind, both rendered with the disciplined hairline work for which Sharaku's prints are admired. Color is held to a tight register so that the keyblock and the face dominate.

In the wider history of Edo ukiyo-e, Sharaku's portraits of ronin and other dispossessed warrior characters demonstrate how yakusha-e could be used to think about social position as well as theatrical role. The impression of this print held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art retains the firm outline that has long made his bust portraits a touchstone for later students of the genre.