The Fifth Month: Actor Bandō Mitsugorō as Warrior Doll

This [yakusha-e](/glossary/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](/glossary/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](/glossary/oban) format and is held in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's collection as part of its comprehensive holding of his work.