Data
Description
The scenes from "The Tale of the 47 Ronin" depicted in these six match label prints are briefly described below.
Print 7 (top left): "Yamazaki Kaido" ("The Road to Yamazaki"). Here we see the handsome thief Ono Sadakuro preparing to attack and kill Yoichibei, the father of Okaru, who is on his way home with fifty gold coins after selling Okaru to a brothel in order to fund Kanpei's reinstatement as a samurai. Hayano Kanpei is Enya Hangan's retainer, and Okaru, Kanpei's lover, is the lady-in-waiting of Kaoyo Gozen (Enya Hangan's wife).
Print 8 (top middle): "Ichiriki Jaya" (or "Gion Ichiriki Jaya" ("At the Ichiriki Teahouse in Gion"). Yuranosuke reads a letter sent to him by Kaoyo containing Moronao's schedule in this famous scene. Moronao's spy Kudayu can be seen reading the same letter secretly from underneath the boardwalk.
Print 9 (top right): "Heiemon to Okaru" ("Heiemon and Okaru"). Heiemon, Okaru's brother and a loyal retainer of Yuranosuke, prepares to kill his sister, presuming that Yuranosuke would want her dead in order to keep the content of the letter (which Okaru also read) secret.
Print 10 (bottom left): The expert swordsman Murakami Kiken comes across Yuranosuke, who is drunk (or at least pretending to be), and looks down on him in disgust, thinking him a poor example of a samurai.
Print 11 (bottom middle): A komuso priest (wearing a straw bascinet and playing the shakuhachi) appears outside Yuranosuke's house just as Tonase (the wife of Kakogawa Honzo, the chief retainer of Momonoi Wakasanosuke) and Konami (Tonase's daughter) prepare to carry out suicide after Yuranosuke's wife Oishi says that Konami and Rikiya (Yuranosuke's son) cannot be married after all, despite having long been betrothed.
Print 12 (bottom right): This image may show Kanzaki Yogoro apologising to a ruffian who has insulted him on the Tokaido postal route, showing his moral fibre.