Parody of act VII of the play "Treasury of Loyal Retainers (Chushingura)"

Parody of Act VII of the Play Treasury of Loyal Retainers (Chushingura), a 1777 Torii Kiyonaga design, is a mitate of one of the most famous scenes in Edo theater. Act VII of Kanadehon Chushingura, the Ichirikijaya teahouse scene, dramatizes Oboshi Yuranosuke's feigned dissipation as he masks his loyalist intentions; the act became one of kabuki's most frequently revived set pieces and one of the most reliably parodied scenes in ukiyo-e. Kiyonaga's mitate replaces the play's male principals and teahouse staff with fashionable contemporary women, preserving the recognizable spatial scheme of the Ichirikijaya — the divided rooms, the entry corridor, the implied off-stage observers — while transforming the scene into a bijin-ga tableau. The strategy is characteristic of Edo bijin-ga in its capacity to absorb theatrical, literary, and historical material into the female-figure repertoire. For the Torii school, which had built its commercial business on direct kabuki documentation through signboards and actor portraits, the Chushingura mitate was a natural pivot point at which the school could deploy its theatrical literacy in the service of bijin-ga subject matter. The Art Institute of Chicago records this 1777 print among its Kiyonaga Chushingura holdings.