Actor Nakamura Matsue as Okaru

This Victoria and Albert Museum print from 1831 shows Nakamura Matsue III in the role of Okaru, the sister of the loyal retainer Heiemon in the climactic seventh act of Kanadehon Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), the supreme tragedy of the kabuki canon. The seventh act is set in the Ichiriki teahouse in Kyoto's Gion district, where the leader of the loyal retainers is feigning dissipation to deceive the enemy's spies. Okaru, sold into the teahouse to fund her father's contribution to the vendetta, discovers a secret letter through her hand-mirror and becomes a key figure in the moral and dramatic logic of the act. Nakamura Matsue III was an onnagata (female-role specialist) and the leading Kamigata female-role actor of the period. Hokuei renders him in the elaborate teahouse-courtesan costume associated with the role, with attention to the dressed-up hair, the precise pattern of the kimono textile, and the slightly tilted head that conveys the character's troubled gaze.