Description

The fourth print appearing in Volume 2 of Gishi taikan, edited by Fukumoto Nichinan. 

It is the spring of 1702 and Ōishi Yoshio has moved to Yamashina, a rural area southeast of Kyoto, and is spending time in Kyoto's pleasure quarters in Gion and Shimabara and in Shumoku-chō in Fushimi. Here he plays one of his own compositions, perhaps Satogeshiki, on the shamisen at the Sasaya brothel where he has been spending time with the courtesan Ukihashi.[1]

Previously, he has divorced his wife Riju and sent his younger children to safety, hoping to spare them punishment for his planned actions.

Lore has it that Ōishi's pleasure pursuits were a ruse to make the bakufu and Kira's clan believe that he was not capable of carrying out the vendetta. Tucker points out that "Ōishi, a Genroku samurai who enjoyed life" would have normally been drawn to Kyoto's entertainment districts and that the extent of his debauchery as part of his plan to keep Kira off-guard was likely exaggerated in building the legend of the Righteous Samurai.[2]  

[1] Forty-Seven Samurai A Tale of Vengeance & Death in Haiku and Letters, Hiroaki Sato, Stone Bridge Press, 2019.

[2] The Forty-Seven Rōnin: The Vendetta in History, John A. Tucker, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 73.

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