The alleged poisoning of the great warrior Kato Kiyomasa (1562-1611) was the subject of a kabuki play that premiered in 1807, but due to government censorship at the time, the main character's name was changed Sato Masakiyo. According to legend,...
battles; men (male humans); warriors; warships; bodies of water
Minamoto Yoshitsune's story is the subject of many stories and plays which treat him as an archetype of doomed valor. The brother of Minamoto Yoritomo, who founded the shogunate, Yoshitsune was placed in a monastery after his father's death in an...
An image of a woman holding a severed head. The beautiful but evil woman who ruined a nation by seducing its ruler away from his duties was a familiar subject during certain periods of Chinese and Japanese history. In the popular imagination, the...
An image of two women. In a series of seven prints, Yoshitoshi depicted the consorts of the Meiji Emperor. These two women before a waterfall are thus identified with Wednesday (water day). While the new Meiji government allowed artists more...
A woman, slightly bent over, grasps her hair at the river's edge. Kiyohime was the daughter of an innkeeper at the village of Masago. Anchin was a devout monk at Dojo Temple on the banks of the Hidaka river. Each year Anchin stayed at Kiyohime's...
A woman with a large yellow and black umbrella (open) is accompanied by three white herons. The relationship of the animal kingdom to the world of human beings is close in rural societies. People feel a kinship with the wild creatures around them. ...
legends (folk tales); men (male humans); natural landscapes
The Indian prince Daruma is seated on a pile of straw in a ruin, absorbed in meditation. The moon shows through a hole in the wall with a vine silhouetted in front of it. Daruma is wrapped in a richly colored red robe and has finely detailed curly...
legends (folk tales); men (male humans); armor (protective wear); Buddhas
An armored samurai is wrestling a red demon and multitude of skeletons under the gaze of a grinning yellow Buddha. Toki Motosada has seized the demon by the wrist and is throwing it down. Moths flutter around them under a full moon.
Where...
legends (folk tales); robes (main garments); children (people by age group); boys; sandals
Back to back print. A man in a priest's robes and headdress cups the chin of a young boy standing beside him; a rosary dangles from his right wrist. The boy, dressed in traveling clothes, grasps the priest's wrist and lays his face in the man's...
