Utagawa Kuniyoshi's 47 Ronin

This is a story of loyalty, obstinacy and unusual honor, carried out by 47 Samurai to avenge the death of his master. To avenge him, these Samurai carefully planned the attack for almost two years, even leading a common life of workers and traders, many of them living a lazy and idle life in order to outwit his enemies. Even though everyone should commit "seppuku" (ritual suicide) if the mission were to materialize, the Samurai went ahead and avenged their master. In this book were used prints and traditional Japanese Mino washi (Mino paper, originally created in the Nara period in the eighth century A.D.) scanned in high definition, with the purpose of recreating the atmosphere of Japanese high visual refinement. The 131 illustrations in this book are by master Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), one of the greatest of the art school of Japanese woodblock Ukiyo-e.