Actors Mimasu Tokujirô I as Hayano Kampei (Left) and Nakayama Kojûrô VI as Ono Sadakurô (Right) in “Treasury of the 47 Loyal Retainers” (“Kanadehon chûshingura”)

This hosoban diptych in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated to about 1786, places two of Edo's leading performers in roles from Kanadehon Chūshingura, the great kabuki adaptation of the forty-seven loyal retainers story. Hayano Kampei, the disgraced samurai-turned-hunter played here by Mimasu Tokujirō I, and the villainous Ono Sadakurō, played by Nakayama Kojūrō VI, are among the most psychologically charged figures in the cycle, and their pairing exemplifies the type of confrontation that Chūshingura productions reliably staged. Shun'ei uses the diptych format to make each actor's face and posture do specific narrative work: Kampei's drawn, almost haunted features contrast with Sadakurō's predatory composure, making clear without text which is the conflicted protagonist and which the moral antagonist. The hosoban format — the narrow vertical sheet favored by the Katsukawa school for actor prints — concentrated attention on the figure's bearing and the cut of the costume, here used with characteristic Katsukawa restraint. The print is also valuable as documentation of a specific theatrical event in Edo's mid-1780s kabuki season, when Chūshingura was already entrenched as the most reliably commercially successful play in the repertoire.