Role of Benkei, from the Play Kanjinchō (Subscription List)

This color woodblock print of about 1950, indexed at the WBP (Asian Collection Internet Auction) reference database, depicts an actor in the role of the warrior monk Benkei in the kabuki play Kanjinchō ("The Subscription List"), one of the most celebrated works of the Ichikawa Danjūrō family's aragoto repertoire. The play dramatizes Benkei's protection of his lord Yoshitsune at the Ataka barrier, where he reads an entirely fictitious subscription list from a blank scroll to deceive the suspicious checkpoint guards. Ueno Tadamasa's design captures Benkei mid-reading, the costume and tate-eboshi cap rendered with the bold Torii-school linework and the actor's face shown in the heavy kumadori associated with the role. The print belongs to Tadamasa's prolific early-1950s period of independent [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) production and documents the visual conventions of the Kanjinchō Benkei as performed on the Tokyo kabuki stage in the immediate postwar years.