The July 1894 Kabuki play Shinmon Tatsumi no Koganei was written by Kawatake Shinshichi III as a direct stage adaptation of the 1882 novel Rakka Seifu Keio Suikoden (落花清風 慶応水滸伝). The novel was written by the highly popular Meiji-period author Ryutei Tanehiko III. When the play debuted at Tokyo's Ichimura-za theatre, the promotional woodblock prints explicitly carried the alternative title Keio Suikoden, as in this 1894 triptych by Kunichika.

The word Suikoden is the Japanese title for the classic Chinese epic novel Water Margin (Shuihu Zhuan), which follows a legendary band of 108 righteous outlaws fighting against a corrupt establishment. The author Ryutei Tanehiko III and the playwright used this framework to map the real-life, chaotic turf wars of the Keio era (1865–1868)—the violent, final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Instead of Chinese bandits, the "righteous outlaws" of this Japanese version were the real-world machi-bikeshi (town firemen), kyokaku (chivalrous street bosses), and bakuto (gamblers) who controlled the Edo underworld.

In this dramatic triptych a fire rages through storehouses on the riverbank behind the two heavily-tattooed characters carrying firefighting equipment - Shinmon Tatsugoro with a bamboo ladder and Kogane Ikojiro with a bucket of water.

Another impression of the same triptych is in the collection of the Waseda University Theatre Museum, artwork number 101-4658, go to: https://archive.waseda.jp/archive/detail.html?arg={"subDB_id":"52","id":"194097;1"}&lang=en