One of the 47 Ronin

One of the 47 Ronin is a woodblock print attributed to Utagawa Kunisada and preserved in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria collection as documented through ukiyo-e.org. The forty-seven loyal retainers of Asano Naganori, who avenged their master's forced suicide by attacking Kira Yoshinaka in 1703, were dramatized in Kanadehon Chushingura and many other plays, and over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they became the single most marketable subject for Edo ukiyo-e yakusha-e and warrior prints. Kunisada, the leading Utagawa school designer of the mid-nineteenth century, contributed prolifically to Chushingura imagery, designing actor portraits of each retainer, mitate sets, triptych narrative scenes, and individual character studies. Without confirmed series attribution from the cataloging museum, this sheet should be approached as a representative example of his handling of the forty-seven-ronin theme, in which a single ronin was given full-figure treatment with attention to weapon, costume, and pose so that viewers familiar with the cast could identify the character. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's Kunisada holdings, drawn largely from Western donors, allow North American researchers a useful working sample of his theatrical output. For collectors approaching Edo ukiyo-e through Chushingura, Kunisada's ronin prints remain among the most informative and visually rewarding sheets in any survey collection.