A Chushingura Parody, Act VII

Torii Kiyonaga's "A Chushingura Parody, Act VII" recasts the famous seventh act of "Kanadehon Chushingura," set at the Ichiriki Teahouse in Kyoto's Gion district, through the conceit of mitate, in which the canonical revenge drama is restaged with the cast of the floating world. In the original play, the disguised samurai Oboshi Yuranosuke conceals his plot to avenge his lord by feigning a life of dissipation in the company of courtesans. Kiyonaga's parody shifts the scene into the contemporary world of Edo bijin-ga, where figures who look like fashionable Yoshiwara courtesans and clients gesture toward the play's iconic moments. As head of the Torii school, he had grown up in an environment that took Chushingura, with its rich theatrical and literary tradition, as common cultural property, and his print assumes a viewer familiar enough with the source to enjoy the substitutions. The composition uses his signature elements: tall, columnar figures, calm oval faces, and long flowing kimono patterns. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this sheet, documented through ukiyo-e.org, where it joins a body of Kiyonaga mitate that bridge the worlds of kabuki, samurai romance, and the floating-world bijin-ga. The print demonstrates how the Torii school's bijin-ga could absorb the most famous narrative of Edo theater into its own visual idiom.