Actors Sanogawa Ichimatsu and Segawa Kikunojo as Lovers

Two figures share a single umbrella, and to an 18th-century Edo audience that detail was the whole message. A couple under one umbrella, the aiaigasa, was the standard shorthand for lovers, and on the kabuki stage both of these lovers were men. Segawa Kikunojo was an onnagata, a specialist in female roles, and plays the woman here, while Sanogawa Ichimatsu takes the man. The print is a benizuri-e, made just before full-colour printing arrived, so its colour is held to a soft rose-red and a green worked over the black outline. Ichimatsu was a star in his own right, and the checkerboard of alternating squares he wore on stage still carries his name in Japanese, ichimatsu, the word used for that pattern today.