Act Four: Enya Hangan's Castle from the play Chushingura (Treasury of the Forty-seven Loyal Retainers)
- Date:
- c. 1795
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; koban
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
This Katsukawa Shunei print depicts Act Four of Kanadehon Chushingura, the Treasury of the Forty-seven Loyal Retainers, set at Enya Hangan's castle. Act Four is the emotional pivot of the play. The disgraced lord Enya Hangan, ordered to commit seppuku for striking the corrupt official Moronao at Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine, performs the ritual in his own residence, surrounded by retainers including his loyal vassal Oboshi Yuranosuke, who arrives moments before his lord's death and silently receives the bloodstained dagger that will guide him on the path of revenge. Shunei composes the scene with multiple figures arrayed inside the castle interior, conveying the gravity of the moment through restrained pose and careful spatial arrangement rather than overt theatricality. The sheet is one of an eleven-print suite by Shunei documenting the acts of Chushingura, a project that drew on both the Katsukawa school's strength in kabuki actor prints and on the artist's developing interest in stage tableau. As Katsukawa Shunsho's senior pupil and one of the most influential printmakers of the 1790s, Shunei was well placed to undertake such an ambitious narrative cycle, balancing actor likeness with the demands of multi-figure composition. This impression in the Art Institute of Chicago belongs to the museum's near-complete run of the suite and supports comparative study of the Chushingura iconography across late-eighteenth-century Edo [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e).
c. 1793
Color woodblock print; hosoban; from a multisheet composition (?)
c. 1794
Color woodblock print; hosoban
About 1795
Color woodblock print; ôban
c. 1793
Color woodblock print; hosoban
Act Four: Enya Hangan's Castle from the play Chushingura (Treasury of the Forty-seven Loyal Retainers) was created by Katsukawa Shun'ei (勝川春英) in c. 1795.
Act Four: Enya Hangan's Castle from the play Chushingura (Treasury of the Forty-seven Loyal Retainers) depicts castles.
