The actor Bando Hikosaburo V as Konjin Chogoro, from the series "One Hundred Selected Actors (Haiyu hyakkasen)"

From the series "One Hundred Selected Actors (Haiyū hyakkasen)," this 1864 design by Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III) portrays Bandō Hikosaburō V in the role of Konjin Chōgorō, a folk-legendary outlaw figure whose stories were adapted repeatedly to the kabuki stage. The "One Hundred Selected Actors" framework gave the elderly Kunisada a structure for issuing a sustained run of yakusha-e portraits late in his career, organizing individual sheets into a celebratory anthology of the Edo stage. Bandō Hikosaburō V was among the leading performers of the bakumatsu years, and Kunisada's portrayal records both the actor's distinctive features and the costume conventions used for outlaw roles. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression (artwork 131718). The series exemplifies how Edo ukiyo-e in its final years before the Meiji Restoration continued to revolve around kabuki celebrity, and how Kunisada's workshop sustained the visual journalism that had defined his career across the Bunsei, Tenpō, and Ansei eras. As yakusha-e, it functioned as portrait, advertisement, and souvenir - an object Edo theatergoers could acquire to carry home a fragment of the playhouse experience.