The Actor Matsumoto Koshiro IV as Nagoya Sanzaburo

In this print, the leading actor Matsumoto Koshiro IV (1737-1802) performs the role of Nagoya Sanzaburo, a character based on a masterless samurai (ronin) who lived in the disorder of the late sixteenth century and traveled among the kabuki-mono, a flagrantly uncontrolled group of rebels who defied social convention. In legend, Nagoya became a romantic figure who was sometimes linked to Okuni, the unconventional female performer who first performed kabuki. This print by Shunsho, the artist who produced the first realistic portraits of actors, would have belonged to a set that, when placed side by side, portrayed several actors in the same play. Here the handsome actor, wearing a stylish costume with a coat decorated with triple umbrellas, raises the deep straw hat that was worn as a disguise to conceal his identity.