Kitagawa Utamaro 喜多川歌麿

The Treasury of Loyal Retainers is the dramatization of the story of 47 samurai (ronin) who avenge their master’s death. On a dark, rainy night in Act 5, Ono no Sadakuro, a bandit dressed in black, steals a gold-filled pouch from an old man he meets in a grove of pine trees along the road. In the print on view, a popular teahouse waitress named Okita (the woman in black) represents the outlaw; the potted tree symbolizes the pine grove; and the laundress (whose shaved eyebrows indicate that she is a widow) represents the old man whose purse was stolen.

The Treasury of Loyalty (Chushingura) told the tale of the forty-seven masterless samurai (ronin) who avenged their lord’s death and then committed suicide. The teahouse mistress and servant depicted here are deliberately matched with an episode from this tale of martial devotion and loyalty to parody the social values espoused by the Tokugawa regime.