The role of Kagekiyo, a Taira hero from the 12th century

This 1952 color woodblock ōban, indexed in the Japanese Art Open Database, depicts an actor in the kabuki role of Taira no Kagekiyo, the twelfth-century warrior whose story is told in the play of the same name and in related works of the aragoto repertoire. Kagekiyo, a Taira loyalist captured after the fall of his clan at the close of the Genpei War, is celebrated in kabuki for the scene in which he refuses to be subdued and tears his way free of his bonds in an explosion of mie-pose theatrical fury. Ueno Tadamasa's design shows the actor in full red kumadori makeup, the costume rendered with the bold, slightly exaggerated linework characteristic of Torii-school [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e). The print belongs to the 1951–1953 Shōkokusha series of kabuki-jūhachiban prints in which Tadamasa documented the canonical roles of the Ichikawa Danjūrō family repertoire. As a record of mid-century kabuki performance and of the Torii school's continuing role as the official painters of Tokyo kabuki, the print is an important twentieth-century example of yakusha-e in the classical Edo tradition.