Kawarazaki Sansho as Musashibo Benkei: Kanjincho by Toyohara Kunichika | 豊原国周 弁慶

Toyohara Kunichika (豊原国周) devoted his whole career to the kabuki stage, and his power of expression earned him the nickname the Sharaku of the Meiji era. This print, made in February 1872, is one sheet of a triptych that formed a single panoramic scene of the play Kanjincho at the Morita Theater in Tokyo, with Yoshitsune at the left and Togashi at the right around the central figure shown here.

The actor Kawarazaki Sansho plays the warrior monk Musashibo Benkei. The same actor would later take the name of the ninth Ichikawa Danjuro and be hailed as the greatest kabuki performer of the age. The design shows the party's famous disguise as mountain ascetics crossing the Ataka barrier: Benkei wears the small tokin cap of the yamabushi, surmounted by a magnificent helmet with a dragon crest, while his purple robe is covered with the mimasu crest of the Ichikawa family, a bold announcement of the actor's identity.

Kunichika's art is all here: the fierce power of the actor's gaze, the instant of a dramatic pose frozen at its climax, and the thick, sweeping lines that gave Meiji ukiyo-e its energy. His signature Toyohara Kunichika hitsu and date seal appear on the white cartouche at the left edge of the sheet.

The scene condenses one of the most celebrated plays in the kabuki repertoire, the story of Yoshitsune's escape through the barrier with Benkei's desperate deception, into a single figure of towering presence. It is a portrait of an actor on the way to becoming a legend, drawn by the printmaker who understood kabuki better than any of his contemporaries.