The actor Yamashita Kinsaku II as the wife of Ito Kuro

The onnagata Yamashita Kinsaku II here plays a delicate beauty bundling her child against the snow, in a role tentatively identified as “the wife of Itō Kurō.” The winter setting is defined by a bamboo fence and gate with nandina, a winter berry; snowflakes speckle the gray background. Her kosode, decorated with snowcovered bamboo, is drawn over one shoulder to reveal an inner layer patterned with octupi, and the child’s robe is adorned with treasure wheels and arabesques. Bunchō’s onnagata recall Harunobu’s youthful female figures, while appearing somehow less delicate. Similarly, his setting is reminiscent of Harunobu’s famous snow scenes, but the fence and gate confine the figure in a shallow, stagelike space appropriate for a theatrical subject.

Born in Osaka, Yamashita Kinsaku alternated between the Kamigata stages of Osaka and Kyoto and the theaters of Edo. He appears in several other hosoban-size prints by Bunchō made around 1769–1771. Small holes along the right edge of this print indicate that it was once bound into an album.