The Actor Arashi Tokusaburō as the Female Gallant (Onnadate) Ōhashi

This vertical ōban woodblock print ([nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e)), dated 1838 and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (accession number 2020.299), depicts the actor Arashi Tokusaburō in the role of the female gallant (onnadate) Ōhashi. The print is signed "Sadamasu ga" and dates from the heart of the artist's first major productive period in the late 1830s, when he was the leading specialist designer of [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) in Osaka. The onnadate, a stock kabuki role-type featuring a chivalrous woman who behaves with the bravado and code of honour of a male otokodate (street knight), was one of the most demanding and popular character types on the Osaka stage, and the part of Ōhashi gave actors of the period an opportunity to display the range of stylized poses, gestures, and costume effects that defined their public personae. Sadamasu's portrait is built on careful observation of the actor's physiognomy and stage manner, framed within the dimensions of the vertical ōban (37.5 by 24.4 cm) that the Osaka school occasionally adopted for higher-status compositions alongside its standard chūban output. The print is part of the Metropolitan Museum's extensive holdings of Japanese woodblock prints and is one of three Sadamasu/Kunimasu sheets in that collection. It is a representative example of the artist's late-1830s yakusha-e at the moment when his career was at its peak, before his name change to Kunimasu in 1848 and the eventual transition away from the woodblock medium in the early 1850s.