The Actor Nakamura Nakazo as Kamaya Buhei

Kamaya Buhei, the character depicted here, was the sole witness to a 1683 fire started by the teenage beauty Yaoya Oshichi (1667–1683), daughter of a greengrocer. Oshichi’s dramatic crime and punishment became the subject of numerous ballads, puppet plays, and Kabuki dramas. In most versions, a fire in Edo leads Oshichi to take refuge at a temple, where she meets and falls in love with a handsome acolyte. Later she returns home, but desperate to be reunited with her lover at the temple, she sets another fire. In the version of the story upon which this print was based, Buhei witnesses the arson and turns Oshichi in, leading to her arrest and execution.
Takebei, here played by Nakamura Nakazō I, is shown in a jaunty checked jacket (haori) emblazoned with the actor’s crest. Beneath it he wears a kosode whose dayflower blue pigment has now turned to yellow, and a sword worn through his striped obi. He looks suspiciously back over his shoulder through a Shinto shrine gate (its plaque is a standard one for Inari shrines: Shōichii Inari Daimyōjin). This scene is thought to have occurred at the beginning of a play in which Oshichi (played by Segawa Kikunojō) falls in love with a masterless samurai named Kichisa (Bandō Hikosaburō) at Masaki Inari Shrine.