Banzuiin Chōbei Meeting His End at the Residence of Terasai Kanshin (Banzuiin Chōbei Terasai Kanshin no yashiki ni oite saigo gōyū no zu)

This 1856 ōban color woodblock print by Utagawa Kunitsuna I, held by Waseda University Library (accession number 201-5892), depicts the celebrated final scene of Banzuiin Chōbei — the legendary seventeenth-century Edo otokodate (chivalrous commoner) and head of the city's labor-broker syndicate — meeting his end at the residence of Mizuno Jūrōzaemon (here transposed as Terasai Kanshin in conformity with Edo censorship conventions). The Banzuiin Chōbei legend was one of the most enduring popular-narrative subjects of Edo-period drama and visual culture, dramatized in kabuki, jōruri puppet theater, and ukiyo-e from the late seventeenth century through the Meiji era.

The legend told how Chōbei, after a long rivalry with the rough samurai Mizuno, accepted Mizuno's hypocritical invitation to a banquet, knowing that he was likely to be killed, and went to his death with the same stoic dignity that defined his life. The story became a paradigmatic narrative of commoner valor against samurai treachery, embodying the otokodate code of personal honor that drew Edo audiences across class lines.

Kunitsuna's 1856 dating places the print in the Ansei era, during the wave of late-Edo kabuki productions that revisited the celebrated jidaimono (period drama) subjects of the seventeenth century. The composition belongs to a group of related Waseda Library sheets (201-5892 through 201-5894) that together depict the various characters of the death scene — including 'Komazoemon Yarōta,' 'Domata Tanomu,' 'Kamai Daimon,' Mizuno himself (transposed as Terasai Kanshin), and other retainers — distributed across multiple impressions in the conventional yakusha-e pattern of depicting each major role on its own sheet for collector assembly.