The Actor Ichikawa Omezō I as the Young Daimyo Momonoi Wakasanosuke

The Kabuki actor Ichikawa Omezō I (1769?–1833) played the brash, young daimyo Momonoi Wakasanosuke, who along with chief retainer, Kakogawa Honzō, hatched the plot for revenge that is at the heart of popular play “The Treasury of Loyal Retainers” (Kanadehon Chūshingura). (Note that birth date given for Omezō in most sources, 1781, must be wrong, if one takes into account records of his early performances from the mid-1780s.)

In 1795, three theaters in Edo performed Chūshingura at the same time, and to commemorate the spectacle, the publisher Iwatoya issued a series of at least sixteen ōban-format prints by Shun’ei, each with a full-length portrait of one of the main actors performing at the Miyakoza and Kiriza theaters. None has any inscription, except the artist’s signature and (on most examples) the publisher’s seal, as here. At the time of the performances, Kabuki fans of course would not have had any problem identifying their favorite actors or roles, but nowadays, with prints spread near and far, it’s sometimes a puzzle to reconstruct which is which. In the past, The Met catalogued this as Sawamura Sōjūrō III as Enya Hangan, and others have catalogued it as Ōboshi Yuranosuke, but the facial features match most closely those of Omezō (or his father, Monnosuke II), so this probably is the role of Momonoi Wakasanosuke, but further research is required to confirm. In the Met’s collection, see also Shun’ei’s representation of the actor Nakamura Noshio II as the courtesan Okaru created at the same time (acc. no. JP716).