Kabuki Actor Sanogugaemon as Kawarasaki Gonjuro

Kabuki Actor Sanoguemon as Kawarasaki Gonjūrō, designed by Utagawa Kunisada, is a yakusha-e portrait of a working actor in a specific role, the type of print that formed the daily commercial backbone of his vast career. Kawarasaki Gonjūrō was a stage name in the long Kawarasaki family of Edo kabuki actors, and members of this lineage performed regularly at the Kawarasaki-za, one of the city's licensed theaters. Kunisada's portrait conforms to the standard yakusha-e formula he refined over five decades: a single figure shown half- or three-quarter length, in costume and makeup, identified by a cartouche listing both the actor's name and the role being portrayed. The flat ground throws the figure into relief, and the textile patterns of the costume are typically rendered with precise color blocks and occasional embossing. As the leading Edo ukiyo-e designer of the mid-nineteenth century and the holder of the Toyokuni III name, Kunisada effectively shaped how Edo audiences remembered their actors: when a production closed, his prints continued to circulate as portable mementos of the season's stars. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria preserves this impression on ukiyo-e.org (aggv/dscn2010). For modern viewers, prints like this one provide a granular record of nineteenth-century theatrical fashion, casting practices, and the dense network linking the kabuki houses, the publishers, the carvers, and the printers who together produced Edo's visual entertainment industry.