This bold composition, spanning three single-sheet prints, depicts the Kabuki actor Ichikawa Sadanji at the climactic moment of his starring role in the play Keian Taiheiki. Infused with the new spirit in actor prints of the Meiji era, the young man's pose—reflecting not only his just-completed sounding of the depth of the moat by dropping a pebble into it but also his discovery by the watchdog (played by a human actor)—stands out against the vista of the shogun's castle enshrouded in mist.

The eight-act play set current social and political events in the guise of two famous rebellions: one in the fourteenth century, as told in the epic Taiheiki, and the other in the fourth year of Keian (1651) at the outset of the Tokugawa regime, in its death throes when the play was first performed in March 1870. Kawatake Mokuami (1816–1893), the major dramatist of the late Edo and Meiji eras, wrote it to launch the career of the twenty-nine-year-old Sadanji in gratitude to the actor's adoptive father, Kodanji IV. This triptych commemorates a production in June 1883. It is one of thirty-two in an album illustrating the leading Kabuki roles for the seasons 1883–86.