Act II (Nidanme), from the series "Perspective Pictures of the Storehouse of Loyal Retainers (Uki-e kanadehon Chushingura)"

This horizontal oban color woodblock print, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts Act II (Nidanme) from Kitao Masayoshi's perspective-picture series based on the kabuki drama Kanadehon Chushingura, the story of the forty-seven loyal retainers. Dated to circa 1791-1794, the work belongs to the uki-e tradition that applied borrowed European one-point perspective to Japanese theatrical and urban scenes. Act II takes place at the residence of Wakasanosuke and develops the slights and tensions that will eventually drive the loyal retainers' vendetta. Masayoshi handles the receding architectural space with the geometric clarity that distinguished accomplished uki-e designers, drawing the viewer's eye through corridors and into the figured interior. The horizontal o-oban format, larger than the standard oban, was particularly well suited to the deep theatrical settings that uki-e demanded. This series provides important evidence of Masayoshi's mastery of single-sheet print design before he made his celebrated turn toward sketch albums in the later 1790s. The Chushingura set as a whole demonstrates the Kitao school's engagement with the dominant kabuki narrative of the period and Masayoshi's place within the perspectivist current of late eighteenth-century Edo print design.