The Fifth Month: Actor Bandō Mitsugorō as Warrior Doll

This yakusha-e by Utagawa Kunimaru, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (object reference 138517), portrays the actor Bando Mitsugoro in the role of a warrior doll for the fifth-month boys' festival (Tango no Sekku). The fifth-month celebration was a major occasion in the Edo ritual calendar, with families displaying martial dolls (musha ningyo) representing legendary warriors as part of the boys' day observance, and ukiyo-e designers regularly produced prints showing celebrated kabuki actors costumed and posed as these warrior-doll figures. The conceit, which fused the seasonal festival imagery with the celebrity portraiture of the kabuki star, gave the print a double appeal: it functioned both as an actor portrait and as a calendrical-festival image. Bando Mitsugoro III was one of the leading Edo male leads of the Bunka period, and his appearance as a warrior doll in this print reflects the kind of cross-genre actor portraiture that he and his Utagawa school colleagues regularly produced. The print is executed as a color woodblock print on paper in the standard Edo oban format and is held in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's collection as part of its comprehensive holding of his work.