Loyal Retainer with Severed Enemy Heads beside a Camp Fire, from a Loyal Retainers Series

This circa 1850 chūban tate-e color woodblock print by Utagawa Kunitsuna I, listed in the Japanese Art Open Database (item 00030602-020424-F06) as sheet 21 of a Loyal Retainers Series, depicts a kneeling samurai beside a smoking campfire with three severed enemy heads laid out beside him. The image belongs to the genre of [musha-e](/glossary/musha-e) (warrior prints) treating subjects from the Chūshingura (Treasury of Loyal Retainers) narrative — the celebrated 1701-1703 vendetta in which forty-seven masterless samurai (rōnin) avenged the death of their lord Asano Naganori by attacking and beheading the Kira mansion's master, Kira Yoshinaka — or from a related vendetta narrative within the broader 'loyal retainers' (giko) literary tradition.