Act Eight

Catalog note / 解説

A Treasury of Loyalty (Chüshingura) is a semi-fictional tale based on the true story of forty-seven samurai who tried to assassinate the feudal lord responsible for their master’s suicide. The story was very popular in the nineteenth century, and was the inspiration for numerous Kabuki plays and other popular fiction. It was a particularly important subject for Hokusai, since he traced his ancestry to one of the forty-seven samurai. Behind a group of travelers dominating the foreground, the mid-ground is occupied by numerous buildings along an active road, while a snow-covered Mount Fuji on the horizon marks the background. This print is a fine example of the way in which Hokusai combined W…