The temple boy who grew up to be Japan's greatest thief. Behind this innocent name hides one of the country's most beloved outlaws. Sutewakamaru is a chigo — a temple page — but through the usual gleeful contortions of kabuki plotting, he is revealed to be the young Ishikawa Goemon: the legendary master-thief, the Robin Hood of the Momoyama age, the rogue so famous that his eventual execution — boiled alive in an iron cauldron — gave Japan the word for a deep bathtub (a goemonburo) ever after.

Kunisada catches him in his most spectacular stage effect, from the Competition of Magic Scenes. Goemon rides an unfurled magic scroll through the air, a wicker basket on his back, gazing coolly aside with the confidence of a man who knows no one can touch him while he's aloft. On stage, the actor really did soar out over the heads of the audience on wires, rising through a trap in the hanamichi — an unforgettable coup de théâtre. The thief as sorcerer, the outlaw as showman: pure floating-world glamour, and about as on-brand a rogue as this catalogue holds.

The actor Nakamura Shikan (中村芝翫) as Sutewakamaru (捨若丸), from the series Toyokuni kigō kijutsu kei (豊国揮毫奇術競, Magic Scenes in Kabuki Dramas by Toyokuni) 1864.

Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞, 1786-1865)