Skip Ribbon Commands
Skip to main content
Seattle Art Museum (SAM)
menu
Skip Navigation Linksvisit

Act Six (Rokudanme), from the series Treasury of the Forty-Seven Loyal Retainers (Chushingura)

Photo: Colleen Kollar Zorn

Act Six (Rokudanme), from the series Treasury of the Forty-Seven Loyal Retainers (Chushingura)

1801-02

Kitagawa Utamaro

Japanese, 1754 - 1806

In this design, Utamaro shows a geisha tying her narrow sash, preparing to head out for the evening's appointment. Her manservant wraps her samisen box in a cloth, while a female attendant readies the lantern. These simple preparations are likened in the inset picture to a dramatic encounter in Chushingura, in which Okaru, betrothed to Kampei, one of the forty-seven loyal retainers, is forcibly taken away to become a teahouse waitress. Her elderly mother and Kampei look on, aggrieved. This print is one of eleven from a Chushingura series in which famous episodes from the popular kabuki play are compared to genre scenes that share a common element.

--Catherine Roche, Curatorial Associate, 2010
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Sheet: 15 x 10 in. (38.1 x 25.4 cm)
Gift of Mary and Allan Kollar, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum
2017.23.15
Provenance: Collection of Mary and Allan Kollar, Seattle, Washington; to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 2017
Photo: Colleen Kollar Zorn
location
Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Fleeting Beauty: Japanese Woodblock Prints, Apr. 1 - July 4, 2010. Text by Catherine Roche. Cat. no. 31, reproduced p. 54.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Renegade Edo: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec, July 21 - Dec. 3, 2023. Text by Xiaojin Wu. No cat. no., p. 100.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

Learn more about Equity at SAM