Act 12 (Junidanme), from the series The Storehouse of Loyal Retainers (Kanadehon Chushingura)

This 1862 color woodblock print (nishiki-e) in ōban format, held by the Art Institute of Chicago (accession number 1995.206.8), depicts the twelfth and final act (Junidanme) of the kabuki cycle The Storehouse of Loyal Retainers (Kanadehon Chūshingura), the most famous and most frequently illustrated narrative in the Japanese theatrical repertoire. The Chūshingura cycle dramatizes the historical revenge of the Forty-Seven Rōnin, the masterless samurai who in 1703 avenged the death of their lord Asano Naganori by attacking and killing the courtier Kira Yoshinaka. Act 12, the final act, depicts the rōnin's successful raid on Kira's residence and their subsequent surrender, the moral and emotional climax of the entire cycle. Utagawa Yoshifuji's print belongs to the dense tradition of Chūshingura imagery that ran through ukiyo-e from the eighteenth century onward and that continued to flourish under Kuniyoshi and his pupils in the mid-nineteenth century. The print was produced in 1862, the final year of the Bunkyū era and one of the most productive years of Yoshifuji's career, immediately following his run of Yokohama-e and visual-puzzle compositions of 1861. It is held in the Art Institute of Chicago's Japanese print collection and is a representative example of his contribution to the persistent Chūshingura tradition in late-Edo ukiyo-e.