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The Loyal League: Images from Japan’s Enduring Tale of Samurai Honor and Revenge

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TITLE: Album of Rōnin Containing Fifty-one Portraits (from Chūshingura) (detail)

CREDIT: Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Japanese, 1798-1861. n.d. Color woodblock. SBMA, Gift of the Frederick B. Kellam collection.

hiroshige

TITLE: Act XI: After the Night Raid: The Rōnin Withdrawing from Moronao’s Mansion (detail), first issued 1835-40

CREDIT: Hiroshige, Japanese, Color woodblock print. SBMA, Gift of Frederick B. Kellam collection.

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TITLE: Act X: Disguised Rōnin Testing the Loyalty of Merchant Gihei (detail), from a Chūshingura series, first issued 1830s.

CREDIT: Kunisada, Japanese, Color woodblock print, triptych. SBMA, Gift of F.Bailey Vanderhoef, Jr.

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TITLE: Act IV: Chief Retainer Yuranosuke Swears Revenge Outside the Castle (detail), from the series Kanadehon Chūshingura, first issued late 1830s.

CREDIT: Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Japanese, Color woodblock print. SBMA, Gift of Frederick B. Kellam collection.

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hiroshige
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The Loyal League of 47 samurai, or commonly known in Japan as Chūshingura (literally The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), is the most significant samurai loyalty-revenge story. It has come to encompass a historical incident and all subsequent related theatrical, literary, and visual materials. Drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection and supplemented with private loans, this exhibition examines the wide-ranging pictorial representations of the drama Chūshingura in the flourishing ukiyo (floating-world) woodblock prints and illustrated books, and paintings from the late 18th through the 19th centuries. Images range from stage-like representations to landscape prints with incidental but identifiable figures, from theatrical figural stances to bust-portraits glorifying individual heroes or actors. The works in the exhibition include prints by ukiyo-e print artists Utamaro, Toyokuni, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi, and Kunisada, and paintings by Kinkoku and Nichōsai.