Yasubei

Yasubei depicts Horibe Yasubei, the swordsman remembered both for his role among the forty-seven ronin of the Ako vendetta and, earlier, for the Takadanobaba duel in which he is said to have helped his uncle dispatch multiple opponents. Mori would likely have chosen the Takadanobaba episode, with Yasubei in mid-stride or mid-cut, since the running pose suits his preference for figures locked in narrative action. The composition is built from broad black contours and unmodulated color planes, the costume reduced to a few flat shapes with crest and pattern printed as graphic repeats rather than rendered through bokashi gradation. The print belongs to Mori's long musha-e cycle, drawn from the same well of kabuki and historical legend that supplied earlier ukiyo-e masters such as Kuniyoshi but reworked through his sosaku-hanga vocabulary of self-carved, self-printed blocks on washi. Subjects from the Chushingura cycle recur across his career.