Ichikawa Danjuro IX as Benkei in "Kanjincho"

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

This portrait of famed kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro, in his role as the Japanese warrior Monk Musashibo Benkei in the play "Kanjincho," was included in the Tokyo publication Yamato Shimbun as a furoku (supplement) for subscribers. The newspaper commissioned the popular artist to do a series of works pertaining to notable people in Japan, titled "Kinsei jimbutsu shi" (Personalities of Recent Times).

At this time, Yoshitoshi was at the peak of his career and was in the midst of producing his most famous series, "One Hundred Aspects of the Moon"; rather than doing these supplements for pay, he did them as a favor to the publisher. Yoshitoshi is considered the last great master of Japanese ukiyo-e woodcut print and his work is seen as straddling two great eras of art in Japan: the end of old feudal Japan and the beginning of the new, modern Japan.

Yoshitoshi's work is among the most well catalogued for a medium and genre was was generally not recorded with as much detail as today's woodcuts. On the website dedicated to documenting his work, Yoshitoshi.net, it's noted that these furoku woodcuts were carved by Suntetsudo Enkatsu and Yamamoto.