Segawa Roko as a courtesan

This color woodblock print (nishiki-e), held by the Art Institute of Chicago (reference 29640, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold G. Henderson), depicts the kabuki actor Segawa Roko in the role of a courtesan. Segawa Roko was one of the celebrated stage names in the onnagata (female-role specialist) line of the Segawa family of Edo kabuki actors; multiple generations of Segawa Roko performed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the female roles for which their lineage was most famous. The sheet, at 31.5 by 17.2 cm, is in a relatively compact format and presents the actor in the full courtesan costume that was a standard subject of Edo yakusha-e and a recurring setting in the kabuki repertoire. Onnagata portraiture occupied a particular place in Edo print culture: connoisseurs prized the actor's ability to inhabit the female role with such conviction that the portrait functioned simultaneously as a likeness of the actor, a representation of a stage character, and an idealized image of a beautiful courtesan. The print, dated only as "Unknown" in the Chicago catalogue, belongs to Kuniyasu's sustained engagement with kabuki subjects during his late-Bunka and Bunsei-era career. It is a representative example of his yakusha-e practice and entered the Art Institute through the gift of Harold and Vera Henderson, important twentieth-century collectors of Japanese prints.