The genre of Otsue painting started when pictures were sold to travelers passing through Oiwake-juku, the outskirts of Otsu on the Tokaido highway in the early Edo period. This piece made in the Genroku era depicts five handsome men from Osaka, a popular theater subject in the Kinki region.

It was submitted to the first exhibition of Otsue held at Fogg Art Museum in 1929, which Soetsu Yanagi conceived and curated.