尾形月耕 • 四十七名忠臣 • 大石内蔵助 義雄 • 日本木版画 - 日本 - 明治時期（1868-1912）

Artist: Ogata Gekkō (尾形月耕, 1859–1920)，signed Gekkō (月耕) with seal
Title: Ōishi Kuranosuke Yoshio (大石内蔵助良雄, 1659–1703) — chief retainer (karō) of Akō and leader of the Forty-Seven Rōnin

Series: Gishi Shijūshichi Zu (義士四十七圖) — Pictures of the Forty-seven Loyal Retainers
Technique: Woodblock print (nishiki-e)
Date: Meiji period, ca. 1895–96
Publisher: Matsuki Heikichi (松木平吉)
Format: Ōban tate-e, approx. 36 × 24 cm

Condition: Very good. A clean, well-registered impression with the characteristic soft, painterly palette of the series — Some overall toning consistent with age and some handling stains on the margins.

Ōishi Kuranosuke Yoshio — The Leader of the Forty-Seven

Gekkō gives the central hero of the whole saga his quietest possible treatment. Ōishi is shown alone in a covered river-boat gliding through heavy mist — a mature man with shaven pate and moustache, in a brown haori over a finely patterned blue kimono, seated on a scrolling-vine (karakusa) cloth, gazing off with a pensive, weary intelligence. A waterside building dissolves into fog behind him and the water laps at the hull below. It is the burden of leadership and the long wait, not the night attack, that the design evokes.

The man himself needs little introduction. Ōishi Yoshio — universally known by his title Ōishi Kuranosuke — was the chamberlain (karō) of the Akō domain and the leader of the Forty-Seven Rōnin, and thus the hero of the Chūshingura. His grandfather's stipend of 1,500 koku passed to him at nineteen, together with the name Kuranosuke, exactly as the biographical cartouche records. When Asano Naganori was forced to commit seppuku for drawing his sword against Kira Yoshinaka and the house of Asano was abolished, Ōishi took command, surrendered the castle peacefully, and secretly began plotting revenge. Knowing Kira would be watching, he adopted a dissipated, drunken life in Kyoto to throw off suspicion; after two years, convinced Kira had relaxed his guard, he slipped his watchers and gathered the band in Edo. The raid succeeded; Kira was beheaded and his head laid at Asano's grave. Ōishi and his comrades were sentenced to the honourable death of seppuku, which they carried out on the 4th day of the 2nd month of Genroku 16 (20 March 1703) — age forty-five, as the cartouche states. In the great kabuki play Kanadehon Chūshingura he is immortalised under the name Ōboshi Yuranosuke.

About the Series

Ogata Gekkō's Gishi Shijūshichi Zu was issued by Matsuki Heikichi between 1895 and 1903, one ōban sheet for each of the Forty-seven (plus related figures). In place of the bust portraits and combat poses of earlier Chūshingura sets, Gekkō gives each retainer a restrained, genre-like vignette in the soft, painterly palette and fine Meiji block-work for which he is admired — closer in feeling to a narrative illustration than a heroic portrait.