Chushingura

Chushingura—the popular dramatization of the forty-seven ronin vendetta that has been retold in every Japanese theatrical and visual medium—provided Gekko with one of the culture's most inexhaustible narrative subjects. His Chushingura print or prints likely depicted a specific scene from the drama, probably the climactic night raid on Kira's mansion, when the forty-seven former retainers enacted their long-planned revenge in a snowstorm that became one of Japanese art's most iconic winter settings.