Yato Yomoshichi Norikane, from Portraits of Faithful Samurai of True Loyalty

Kuniyoshi focused on the story of the forty-seven masterless samurai, or ronin, during the last decade of his life, completing eleven separate series based on the subject. In this incomplete series from 1852 he experiments with Western shading techniques, rendering the faces and hands with a high degree of realism and molding three-dimensional figures with gradations in flesh-colored pigments. This print depicts one of the youngest samurai, Yato Yomoshichi Norikane, who was only sixteen when he replaced his father who died before the vendetta could be carried out. The samurai’s name is included in the long cartouche and along the collar of his outer robe. Imitation Western script runs in the title cartouche border. Each print includes an anonymous poem related to the warriors’ tragic end by ritual suicide.