Actor Segawa Kikunojō as Mizue Gozen

Held in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and dated to 1745, Actor Segawa Kikunojō as Mizue Gozen is a hand-colored woodblock print depicting the leading onnagata Segawa Kikunojō I (1693-1749) in the role of Mizue Gozen, a female character from the Kabuki repertoire. Mizue Gozen appears in several Kabuki and jōruri plays, typically as a noblewoman or principal heroine whose dramatic situation drives the production's emotional core, and Segawa Kikunojō was among the actors most celebrated for the role in mid-eighteenth-century Edo. Yoshinobu's composition shows the actor in the formal three-quarter standing pose favored for single-figure onnagata portraits, with the elaborate layered kimono, the long flowing sleeves, and the distinctive headdress conveying the character's noble status while the actor's specific facial features and gestural conventions identify the performer beneath the role. The 1745 dating places the print squarely within Segawa Kikunojō I's mature career, the period when his onnagata practice had become a fixture of Edo theatergoing and when single-sheet portraits of his most celebrated roles found a steady commercial market. Printed in the hand-colored beni-e mode characteristic of mid-eighteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e, the work documents both the visual conventions of mid-Edo female-role performance and Yoshinobu's specialization within the onnagata portrait subgenre. The MFA Boston example provides one of the strongest dated documents of Yoshinobu's career.