Nakamura Utaemon III as the Monkey Trainer Yojiro (from the series Famous Kabuki Plays)

From a series titled Famous Kabuki Plays, this 1813 Utagawa Kunisada portrait shows Nakamura Utaemon III in the comic-pathetic role of the monkey trainer Yojiro. The Cleveland Museum of Art holds the print, which dates to the early phase of Kunisada's career, decades before he would adopt the Toyokuni III name. Even at this early date Kunisada's yakusha-e shows the confidence of a leading Edo ukiyo-e designer in training: the actor's face is rendered in close nigao likeness, the monkey is drawn with the kind of small-animal specificity Edo printmakers reserved for sympathetic creatures, and the costume catches the dust of an itinerant performer's life. Yojiro is a role that lets a senior actor shift from broad comedy to genuine feeling, and Utaemon III, one of the towering Kamigata stars who also performed in Edo, was famous for that range. The series format placed each portrait against a vignette indicating the play, anchoring the actor likeness within a recognizable narrative moment. Cleveland's catalogue locates the print within Kunisada's early-1810s output, before he became the dominant force in mid-century Edo ukiyo-e. Compared with his later, busier compositions, the sheet's quieter palette and more restrained patterning show the influence of his teacher Toyokuni I, on whose work the young Kunisada built before defining his own style.