The 1962 film version directed by Hiroshi Inagaki, Chūshingura, is most familiar to Western audiences.
Among his film appearances are Ninpō Chūshingura (from a Futaro Yamada story) and Zenigata Heiji (the 1967 Toei film).
While on his way to Indonesia in 1940, he visited Tokyo's Kabuki-za where he watched the famous Kanadehon Chūshingura kabuki play, and was very moved by kabuki as an art form.
The story was turned into an opera, Chūshingura, by Shigeaki Saegusa in 1997.
Hoshina, however, saw this attack as a potential challenge to Tokugawa authority itself, and Yamaga was subsequently exiled to stay with the Asano daimyo in the Akō domain (han), where his life intersects with the tale of the forty-seven ronin, which is later retold in the classic of Japanese literature Chūshingura.