Actor Sawamura Tanosuke

A color ōban woodblock print of 1862 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this Actor Sawamura Tanosuke pictures Sawamura Tanosuke III (1845–1878), one of the youngest and most precocious onnagata stars of the late-Bakumatsu Edo stage. Born into the Sawamura acting family, Tanosuke III had succeeded to the senior Tanosuke name in 1859 at age fourteen, becoming the third-generation holder and rapidly establishing himself as a leading female-role performer at the Ichimura-za. His career was cut short by illness — he was forced to retire in 1873 at age twenty-eight after complications from an injury required amputation of both legs and an arm, and he died in 1878 — and the 1862 prints of his early career constitute the principal visual record of his prime onnagata performances. Kuniaki II's portrait follows the Utagawa-school single-actor formula: the figure pictured in a celebrated role-costume, the face rendered with the idealized soft features of onnagata convention, and the composition framed by inscribed cartouches that recorded role, theater, and date for the contemporary collector.