Otani Oniji III as Yakko Edobei

The kabuki actor Ōtani Oniji III is caught mid-scene as the villainous manservant Edobei, hands splayed like talons and face contorted into a glare, set against a dark ground of glittering mica. Tōshūsai Sharaku produced roughly 140 actor prints in a burst of activity lasting only ten months in 1794–95 and then disappeared so completely that his identity remains debated. His unflinching, near-caricatural yakusha-e broke with the flattering conventions of the genre, seizing the psychological intensity of the stage. This design is his single most famous image and one of the icons of Japanese printmaking, held in fine impressions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Tokyo National Museum.