The Actor Segawa Tomisaburo II as the Otomos' Maid Wakakusa, Actually Prince Korehito

This 1794 woodblock by Toshusai Sharaku, in the Art Institute of Chicago, shows the onnagata Segawa Tomisaburo II as the Otomo household's maid Wakakusa, who is in fact Prince Korehito in disguise. The convention of nested identities, a male prince passing as a young female servant in a household intrigue, was a staple of late-Edo kabuki, and Sharaku's okubi-e for Tsutaya Juzaburo regularly took up exactly these complicated role-types.

The portrait reads as a quiet study in stage femininity sustained under tension. Tomisaburo II is drawn with the typical onnagata signs - high-set painted brows, a small carefully shaped mouth, smooth white-painted skin - but Sharaku draws the underlying male anatomy with characteristic restraint, allowing the neck and jaw their natural weight rather than reducing them to a stylized oval. The head tilts slightly forward, the gaze cast down and away, conveying a young woman trying to remain unnoticed; for viewers attentive to the role, the same composition reads as a prince trying to remain unrecognized.

The maid's hair is set in a long, simple sweep with pins appropriate to a household servant rather than the elaborate headdress of a courtesan, and the kimono pattern is held to subdued motifs that reinforce the disguise. Color is restrained, with the keyblock outline doing most of the descriptive work and the dark mica ground common to Tsutaya's premium yakusha-e providing the velvety backdrop against which the white face reads almost as a portrait medallion.

Within Sharaku's tightly compressed run as an Edo ukiyo-e designer, this print is a particularly fine illustration of how the okubi-e format could carry the layered meanings of kabuki plotting: a portrait of an actor, a portrait of a role, and a portrait of a role-within-a-role, all held in one face. The Art Institute of Chicago retains the impression in its collection.