Act Two: The House of Kakogawa Honzo from the play Chushingura (Treasury of Loyal Retainers)

This Art Institute of Chicago print by Katsukawa Shunsho shows Act Two of Kanadehon Chushingura (Treasury of Loyal Retainers), set at the house of the retainer Kakogawa Honzo. Chushingura, the dramatization of the 1701-03 Ako vendetta in which forty-seven masterless samurai avenged their lord's forced suicide, was the single most produced play in Edo kabuki and a perennial subject for Edo ukiyo-e. Shunsho approaches the second act, which exposes the divided loyalties tearing through the Kakogawa household before the central revenge plot unfolds, by composing the scene as a stage tableau viewable from the audience. Unlike the close hosoban yakusha-e that fill most of his catalogue, prints based on full acts of Chushingura allowed Shunsho to deploy multi-figure groupings, interior architecture, and a fuller sense of stage geography. The Katsukawa school produced sets of such Chushingura prints in part to capitalize on the play's reliable annual revivals, ensuring that fresh impressions remained available whenever a major Edo theater mounted a new production. The play's interlocking acts also encouraged owners to acquire a complete set, anticipating later nineteenth-century serial print publishing. As a piece of Edo ukiyo-e, the image testifies to the way kabuki's literary canon shaped the visual culture of the shogunal capital.