In the print Osai, the wife of a tea ceremony teacher, who secretly longs for Sasano Gonza, her intended son-in-law, holds the sash she has just torn from Gonza after a struggle.  The sash displays his crest and a reverse chrysanthemum joined in a lover's knot.  After tearing off the sash she cries "Are you so devoted to that sash?  Here, I know you won't like it, but wear my sash instead.  It will become a vengeful snake, wrap itself around you waste, and never let you go."¹ While jealous, she smiles sweetly, looking over her shoulder with a tender expression of affection. When Gonza throws her sash into the garden it is taken by the samurai Bannojō, hiding there, as proof of their adultery, the penalty for which is death.

There are at least two editions of each print in the series, with one edition bearing the names of the carver and printer for the series in the bottom margin as follows:

彫刻：山岸主計 手摺：西村熊吉 (Blockcutter: Chôkoku Yamagishi Kazue Printer: Tezuri Nishimura Kumakichi).

This collection's print does not have these markings.

Interestingly, one of the printings changed the color of Osai's kimono and added pattern details to it, as shown below.

¹ The Major Plays of Chikamatsu, translated by Donald Keene, Columbia University Press, 1961, pg. 291.

The Story of Osai in Yari no Gonza kasane katabira (Gonza The Lancer)

Source: The Major Plays of Chikamatsu, translated by Donald Keene, Columbia University Press, 1961, pgs. 4, 312.

Chikamatsu’s career as a dramatist probably began in 1683 when, at the age of thirty, he wrote the puppet play The Soga Successors for the chanter Uji Kaga-no-jo. The Soga Successors (Yotsugi Soga) was highly acclaimed, and the great chanter Takemoto Gidayu (1651-1714) used it to open his theater in Osaka in 1684.  

First performed on September 26, 1717, Chikamatsu modeled this play on events which occurred about six weeks before the first performance, changing the names of the characters and moving the location of the final scene.  He called the chief character Gonza, the hero of a half-century-old ballad.

The play's subtitle, "The Double Hempen Kimonos," places the action in summer and hints at Osai's double love life.

In the play, Osai, the wife of Ichinoshin, is unjustly accused of improper relations with her intended son-in-law Sasano Gonza, who she is secretly in love with.  When they are accused of impropriety, Osai proposes to Gonza that they actually become lovers, ostensibly so that her husband Ichinoshin will have grounds for killing them, which he will do at the grisly end of the play, as related below by the play's narrator.