The actor Ichikawa Ebizo as Usui Arataro Sadamitsu in the Shibaraku scene of the play "Seiwa Nidai Oyose Genji," performed at the Miyako Theater in the eleventh month, 1796

Held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated to the eleventh month of 1796, this ōban single-sheet portrait depicts Ichikawa Ebizō — the recently retired Ichikawa Danjūrō V — in the role of Usui Arataro Sadamitsu performing the legendary Shibaraku ("Wait a moment!") scene from the play Seiwa Nidai Oyose Genji at the Miyako Theater. The Shibaraku scene, with its eruption of an outsized hero in massive ceremonial costume halting a wrongful execution, was the signature aragoto set piece of the Ichikawa Danjūrō lineage, and the 1796 performance — staged shortly before Ebizō's withdrawal from the Edo stage — was the season's celebrated event. Kunimasa designs the portrait as a profile-view large-head okubi-e: the great actor's face fills the upper half of the sheet in unusual lateral framing, the heavy lacquered courtier's hat and patterned juban rendered as solid flats of color, with the dramatic black ink and red-line make-up of the role concentrated on the visible eye and brow. The print is one of the canonical Kunimasa [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) of the decade.