In this artwork, how is the Kanadehon Chūshingura of the Subject elucidated?
This print and the several others in the series from which it is taken depict characters from a staging of the play Kanadehon Chūshingura (仮名手本忠臣蔵) performed in Osaka in the third month of 1848. The play was originally written for the bunraku puppet theatre by Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shōraku and Namiki Senryū I in 1748, and adapted for kabuki later that year. It remains one of the most famous and popular plays in the kabuki repertoire.A jidaimono historical drama, the play tells the ostensibly true and pervasively enduring story of a 1702 incident known as the Akō Affair, in which 47 loyal retainers of a wronged lord avenged his death then committed ritual seppuku suicide. The story of the 47 ronin has long been repeated and romanticized as an idealization of the bushido ethos, and held particular appeal during the latter half of the Tokugawa era  despite, or perhaps in part due to, strict censorship imposed on re-tellings of the incident by the shogunate.
ronin kabuki seppuku bushido bunraku Chūshingura Akō Affair jidaimono