Actor Onoe Kikugoro III (1827) by Shunshosai HokuchōBujalance Collection
The character is the play's villain and is portrayed by the artist Shunshosai Hokuchō, looking in astonishment at a magical pheasant.
This print depicts the actor Onoe Kikugorō III in the role of Nikki Naonori, a part that he played in a performance of Keisei Date no Kikiuta in 1826.
The pheasant is using its claws to write the instructions for the spells needed for the plot against the Ashikaga shogunate (feudal military government) to succeed.
Naonori appears with two swords, revealing his status as a samurai.
He has a small stack of nested boxes, called an inrō, in his belt. These were commonly used to carry identity seals and medicines. The stack of boxes is held together with a cord laced through runners along one side, under the bottom, and up the other side.
Much of the print is taken up by some text narrating Naonori's soliloquy, in which he reveals a plan to usurp the shogunate and take over the world.
The play is one of many based on a historic dispute over succession in the Date samurai clan. The story was set in the distant past, because the government had prohibited the dramatization of recent historical events. But it was still easily recognizable to the public, who enjoyed the performance twice as much in the knowledge that they were getting around the laws on censorship.
