The magician with a dragon at his heel. Unryū Kurō — "Cloud-Dragon Kurō" — is a sorcerer who commands dragons the way other men whistle up a dog. Kunisada places him in his late masterpiece, the Competition of Magic Scenes by Toyokuni, a dazzling series that dropped the era's favourite actors into fantastical roles thick with spells and monsters. Here the actor Kawarazaki Gonjūrō casually forms a magical mudra with his hands, and a great dragon materialises behind him out of blue smoke and silver mica — obedient, almost tame, coiling at his feet like a loyal hound while strands of red flame confirm the sorcery at work.

There's a lovely wrinkle to this one: Unryū Kurō comes from a comic novel of 1858, and there's no record he was ever actually staged. So the print is pure fantasy — the artist dressing a beloved actor as a magician he never truly played, conjuring a performance that existed only on paper. It's kabuki imagined rather than kabuki recorded: the floating world spinning its stars into legends they never quite got to perform.

The actor Kawarazaki Gonjūrō (河原崎権十郎) as Unryū Kurō (雲龍九郎), from the series Toyokuni kigō kijutsu kei (豊国揮毫奇術競, Magic Scenes in Kabuki Dramas by Toyokuni) 1862.

Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞, 1786-1865)