Scene at the Daifukuya (Daifukuya no dan), from the series "Go Taiheiki Shiraishi Banashi"

Scene at the Daifukuya (Daifukuya no dan), from the series Go Taiheiki Shiraishi Banashi, dated 1785 in the Art Institute of Chicago collection, illustrates a key act from the popular kabuki and joruri drama Go Taiheiki Shiraishi Banashi, which dramatises the revenge of the Shiraishi sisters against the corrupt magistrate Shiga Daishichi. The Daifukuya scene is set in a Yoshiwara teahouse where the younger sister Miyagino, who has been sold into the quarter, recognises her long-lost sibling Shinobu among the visitors and the two plot their vengeance. Torii Kiyonaga, heir to a family lineage of theatre printmakers, transforms the stage tableau into a fully realised interior, populating the room with elongated, statuesque figures whose gestures convey the emotional charge of the recognition without resorting to overt melodrama. The Daifukuya episode allowed publishers to combine the box-office appeal of kabuki with the visual vocabulary Kiyonaga had perfected in Edo bijin-ga: tall women, layered kimono patterns, and architectural settings rendered with strict perspective. The print exemplifies the Torii school's enduring role in advertising and amplifying the theatre, even as Kiyonaga pushed the format beyond simple actor portraits into multi-figure narrative compositions. The Art Institute of Chicago records the work as part of its substantial Kiyonaga holdings. For collectors, the sheet is notable as evidence that Kiyonaga did not abandon his Torii inheritance during his peak bijin-ga years, but rather brought the genre's monumentality to bear on theatrical subject matter, raising kabuki illustration to a register equal to his courtesan portraits.