A Treasury of Loyalty (Act 10)

Catalog note / 解説

This print depicts a scene toward the end of the play. In it, Öboshi Gihei, a merchant of Sakai, is asked by Yuranosuke, the leader of these ronin (dispossed samurai), to supply them with weapons. Gihei defends the box in which he keeps the weapons, defying these conspirators, who had been sent to test his loyalty. A conspirator takes his son hostage, threatening to kill the son unless Gihei reveals the contents of the box. He refuses, thus proving his loyalty to the ronin. Hokusai combines two spatial treatments--an outdoor scene in Western-style perspective and an indoor scene in the traditional bird's-eye-view, with walls and roof removed. By the mid-eighteenth century, the Japanese knew…