portrait; men (male humans); robes (main garments); stringed instruments (musical instruments); biwa; women; trees
After the Hogen Rebellion in 1156, the courtier and musician Fujiwara no Moronaga (1137-1192) was exiled to the island of Shikoku. That autumn he consoled himself with a visit to Mt. Miyaji. Yoshitoshi depicts Fujiwara no Moronaga playing a biwa by...
portrait; men (male humans); robes (main garments); stringed instruments (musical instruments); biwa; women; trees
After the Hogen Rebellion in 1156, the courtier and musician Fujiwara no Moronaga (1137-1192) was exiled to the island of Shikoku. That autumn he consoled himself with a visit to Mt. Miyaji. Yoshitoshi depicts Fujiwara no Moronaga playing a biwa...
An image of a warrior with sword and bow and arrows in the foreground, looking back at human/demon forms dancing in the background. Minamoto no Tametomo was, like Oniwaka/Benkei (7), an extremely violent youth. By the time he was fifteen he is...
Portrait; men (male humans); dresses (garments); armor (protective wear)
The warlord Uesugi Kenshin, dressed in full armor, waits in camp before battle. Seated on a deerskin-draped stool beside a blue and white windbreak, he looks over his shoulder at a flock of birds flying past a full moon. A poet, as well as soldier,...
A woman, in a flower-covered red robe, dances, surrounded by small flames. Princess Yaegaki found herself in as difficult a situation as Romeo and Juliet, with whom this story from the play Honcho Nijushiko, or Twenty-four Examples of Filial Piety,...
Ota Dokan approached an inn on a rainy day to request the loan of a rain coat. Instead, the maid brought him a Yamabuki flower on a tray. Her meaning was expressed by the poem "Although having many petals the Yamabuki, to our regret, has no seed."...
A participant in the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate, after the Meiji Restoration Etō Shinpei was appointed to a number of government posts, including Minister of Justice where he played a part in overhauling Japan's penal code. He resigned...
The arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry in June 1853 with his gunships and the negotiation of a commercial treaty with the west sharply divided Japanese society. Proponents of "Expelling the Barbarians," led by the daimyo of Mito, Tokugawa Nariaki,...
A woman kneels with a lotus plant in her hand looking over at a snake rearing beside her; the woman wears a black nun's robe over her kimono and a large lotus leaf forms a halo around her head. The background of the print is delicately shaded from...
Beneath drying autumn grasses, the aged Komachi sits gazing at the moon. Ono no Komachi was a beautiful, intelligent woman and one of the most accomplished early court poets. As a young woman she was pursued by many suitors, most of whom she...
portrait; men (male humans); kimonos; dog (animal)
The Japanese rebel and statesman Takamori Saigo (1827-1877) was the military leader of the imperial forces against the shogunate leading to the Meiji restoration. His growing discontent with the curtailment of the privileges of the samurai class...
depictions; men (male humans); women; children (people by age group); kimonos; interior spaces; fude; artists' brushes
A man with a handlebar mustache kneels on a red rug drawing irises on paper with an ink brush. A woman holding a towel and wearing a half-dozen hairsticks in her elaborate coiffure stands beside him. A small child sits at her feet stirring...
warriors; armor (protective wear); swords; helmets; halberds; women; kimonos; hats; Single Built Works; snow (precipitation); arrows
In the play "Yoshitsune's 1000 Cherry Trees / Yoshitsune senbon zakura," the warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159-1185) must journey to a distant island and entrusts his beloved mistress Shizuka gozen to his friend Sato Tadanobu (1161-1186) for...
A kneeling woman lifts a heavy padded cloth. She wears a gray kimono patterned with flying birds, grasses and a river and underneath this three white under robes, which show at the front and back openings of her long sleeves. Her orange obi is...
A young beauty looks away from the viewer, glancing back over her left shoulder. She wears a comb and a flowered hair ornament with a blue and white tassel in her hair and a ring on her left hand. Three layers of kimono are visible: a gray...
