Ichikawa Danjûrô XII in the role of Nangô Rikimaru in the play Benten Musume Meo no Shiranami

This print depicts Ichikawa Danjūrō XII (1946–2013) as Nangō Rikimaru, one of the five thieves in Kawatake Mokuami's 'Aoto-zōshi Hana no [Nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e),' popularly known as 'Benten Musume Meo no Shiranami' or 'Shiranami Gonin Otoko.' Rikimaru, the gang's enforcer, appears in the Inase-gawa scene where each thief introduces himself beside the river. The role is played in a grounded register relative to the principal Benten Kozō, with a heavier physical presence. Kokei's ōkubi-e treatment would emphasise the actor's set jaw and the patterned kimono distinctive to the role. Worked on ganpi paper using sōsaku-hanga methods of self-design, self-carving, and self-printing, the print reproduces the costume textile through a careful sequence of colour blocks rather than the line-and-flat-colour shorthand of mass-produced theatre prints. Within Kokei's corpus, this design extends his portrait series of Danjūrō XII across the Mokuami repertoire performed at the Kabuki-za during his residency.