The actor Osagawa Tsuneyo II as Osan, Ippei’s elder sister

Tōshūsai Sharaku's 1794 portrait of Osagawa Tsuneyo II as Osan, the elder sister of the manservant Ippei, is an Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e that thickens the artist's known cycle of designs centered on the play in which Ichikawa Omezō appeared as Ippei. Tsuneyo, an onnagata, is rendered in half-length close-up with the diagnostic precision typical of Sharaku's brief output under publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō. The face is given an oval contour with carefully set features: the eyes slightly downcast, the mouth pulled into a restrained, somewhat anxious line, and the brow softened in a way that conveys Osan's worry about her brother's involvement in violence. As with Sharaku's other onnagata portraits, the structural traces of the male performer remain visible at the jaw and in the heaviness of the chin, integrated into the female role rather than smoothed away. The composition is not strictly an okubi-e bust portrait but borrows the close-up logic of that format, isolating the head and shoulders against a muted ground while the patterned collar and elaborate hair ornaments frame the modeled face. The impression in the Art Institute of Chicago belongs to one of Sharaku's later series, when Tsutaya had largely replaced the deep mica backgrounds of the debut prints with quieter color fields. The portrait is a useful illustration of how Sharaku's project as a yakusha-e designer extended beyond celebrity star portraits to encompass the wider network of supporting roles that gave a kabuki performance its emotional texture and moral weight.