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

The Actor Bandō Hikosaburō V as Konjin Chōgorō, from the series One Hundred Selected Actors (Haiyū Hyakkasen), is a [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) print within the Utagawa Toyokuni lineage, held in the Art Institute of Chicago. By 1864, the date the Art Institute assigns to this impression, the Toyokuni name had passed through successive holders, and the print bears the visual hallmarks of late Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) actor portraiture at its most polished. Haiyū Hyakkasen, the series of one hundred selected actors, gathers leading Kabuki performers in individual sheets, each combining a fully realized portrait with the role and stage name that defined the actor's contribution to a particular production. Bandō Hikosaburō V here takes on Konjin Chōgorō, a role rich in the dramatic possibilities of a hero whose identity is bound up with violent destiny. The portrait places the actor against a setting attentive to costume, accessory, and facial expression, all controlled by the confident line that distinguished late Utagawa-school yakusha-e. The Art Institute of Chicago provides the catalogue documentation and date used here. The print belongs to the broader cluster of mid-nineteenth-century actor series that sustained the cultural authority of the Toyokuni name within Edo ukiyo-e, and it shows how the visual conventions inaugurated by the original Toyokuni continued to organize Kabuki portraiture in the years just before the great structural changes of the Meiji era.