Ohan and Obiya Choemon eloping in the drama Katsuragawa Renri no Shigarami, from the series "A Collection of Ancient and Modern Dramas (Kokon Joruri zukushi)"

Ohan and Obiya Choemon are the central lovers of Katsuragawa Renri no Shigarami, a joruri puppet drama based on a real eighteenth-century double suicide on the Katsura River near Kyoto. The story of the older sash-shop owner Choemon and his much younger lover Ohan eloping toward their tragic end became a staple of the puppet and kabuki repertoires. In this 1844 print, dated to the period when Utagawa Hiroshige produced figure and narrative subjects alongside his more famous landscape work, the artist depicts the couple at a moment of flight from the series A Collection of Ancient and Modern Dramas (Kokon Joruri zukushi). Although Hiroshige is best known for Edo ukiyo-e landscape prints, sets like this one show his engagement with theatrical literature and demonstrate how publishers used his recognized name across genres. As is typical for his figure work, the landscape setting is given as much care as the figures themselves: a path, a riverbank, or a wooded backdrop frames the lovers and provides emotional context. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves the controlled palette and clean linework characteristic of mid-1840s Edo publishing. The sheet is valuable both as documentation of a popular dramatic subject and as evidence of the range Hiroshige maintained beyond pure travel and city scenes.