Ehon Chūshingura 葛飾北斎

FSC-GR-780.219

Commentary by Ann Yonemura

Posted November 2014

This book is the second of a two-volume book of illustrations for Chūshingura, the story of forty-seven rōnin (masterless samurai) who vowed to avenge their lord after he was ordered to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for drawing his sword against a dishonorable and insulting official in the shogun’s palace. In a surprise attack one year later, the loyal samurai carried out an unsanctioned vendetta and killed the villain. Once they accomplished their mission, they too were ordered to commit seppuku. The historical events of this story took place in 1701 and 1702 and immediately captured the imaginations of writers for the popular puppet and kabuki theaters. Due to the Edo government’s restrictions against the depiction of recent historical events, the names of the characters were changed and the events were situated in earlier historical periods.

Hokusai’s illustrations portray samurai loyalty, strategy, and courage as performed on the stages of kabuki theaters. As a young artist, he had trained in the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1792), which specialized in single-sheet prints of kabuki actors. Hokusai’s understanding of the theatrical conventions of pose, gesture, and staging is apparent in his illustrations of handsome, commanding actors in their striking stage costumes and roles. Placement of the main characters and action is concentrated in the foreground, as it would be in a stage production. At the same time, he displays his artistic mastery of a broad range of styles for depicting landscapes, interior settings, and human figures, which he had developed through his illustrations for kyōka poetry books beginning in the mid-1790s.

While Hokusai’s illustrations are the main feature of Ehon Chūshingura, there is a text in hiragana by Sakura Jihinari (1762–1833), a writer and kyōka poet, as well as several kyōka poems by various writers. The Pulverer collection includes only volume 2 of this title. It is a late reprinting that shows wear to the blocks, heavy coloration, and fading when compared, for example, to the copy in the British Museum (Hillier 1980, fig. 24, p. 40 and fig. 25, p. 42).

Selected reading

Jack Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration (London: Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 40–42.

Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, vol. 1 (New York: Sotheby’s Publications, 1987), pp. 499–500.

Toda Kenji, Descriptive Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Illustrated Books in the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago (1931; repr., Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2005), p. 238.

Copies in other collections

Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson Collection

British Museum, London