Nakayama Tomisaburo. Dressed as a Woman Wearing a Towel on Her Head

Utagawa Toyokuni I's "Nakayama Tomisaburō. Dressed as a Woman Wearing a Towel on Her Head" presents one of his subtler kabuki actor prints — an onnagata in the casual stage business of a tenugui wrapped over the head, a gesture that could signal seasonal weather, modesty, or a moment of disguise within the play. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the print as part of its Toyokuni collection. Nakayama Tomisaburō was a well-regarded female-role specialist of the period, and Toyokuni's image captures the careful balance an onnagata maintained between feminine illusion and the audience's awareness of the actor beneath the role. As founder of the Utagawa school's dominance in [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) within Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), Utagawa Toyokuni shaped how such moments were visualized. The towel-over-the-head motif appears repeatedly in late-eighteenth-century yakusha-e because it gave artists a compact compositional anchor: the head framed in cloth, the face partly revealed, the gesture domestic enough to read as intimate and theatrical enough to remain a stage attitude. The Art Institute of Chicago's catalogue documents the print without elaboration beyond its inscriptions. For collectors of Edo ukiyo-e and of Utagawa school kabuki actor prints, this Tomisaburō sheet is a useful study of how Toyokuni's yakusha-e operated at the quieter end of the genre — neither in mid-shout nor in mid-strike, but in a held moment that gave the actor's craft room to register.