Courageous Warriors (Musha burui): 25: Gen sanmi Yorimasa

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s (1839-1892) career spanned the late Edo and early Meiji periods. He trained in the ie ‘studio’ of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). His early works gave late Utagawa school theatricality an even greater sense of energy. A taste for lurid melodrama became progressively grotesque as he experienced periods of depression and hospitalisation that interrupted his professional activities. Two events provided opportunities for his professional revival. The first was the opportunity to design "overtly anti-foreign" patriotic reportage illustrations for newspaper and journal inserts in publications like Yamato Shinbun. The second was the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, much celebrated in the film The Last Samurai, which ended in their tragic defeat.

This, however, heralded a positive future for Yoshitoshi. The public were eager for news of rebellion events, and Yoshitoshi’s colour newspaper illustrations were an immediate hit. He published at least thirteen sets of colour print triptych inserts for these publications; between two and 23 compositions survive from each series. Their common theme is the defeat of a shambolic samurai assembly by superior, smartly dressed and impeccably organised Imperial forces. Ironically, while Yoshitoshi’s Satsuma Rebellion illustrations lionised the superiority of the modern Imperial military force over the samurai community, his final projects celebrated the military history, national heroes, and folk lore of pre-Meiji Japan.

Yoshitoshi’s final years were productive. They saw his commitment to three ambitious serial projects: Tsuki hyakkei (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 1885-1892); Shingata sanjurokkaisen (New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts, 1889-1892); and Yoshitoshi musha burui (Yoshitoshi’s Courageous Warriors, 1883-1886). Te Papa acquired four prints from the latter series from the Heriot collection. Each represents an historically significant military figure from the late Heian period or the Sengoku ‘Warring States’ period between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. While they share the complex design of the earlier Meiji works, their linear finesse, refined sense of colour, and remarkable technical refinement set them apart from the melodramatics of earlier commissions. These were promoted as ‘top-shelf’ publications. A column in the newspaper Yomiuri shinbun of May 16 1886 advertising two sheets from the series describes Yoshitoshi as ukiyo-e no taito – ‘the great authority’. The works were allocated an ‘A’ grade status in the 1885 nazorae saiken (‘riddle guidebooks’, published as guides to Edo cultural engagements, including judgements on artist quality). The works were an instant success, reprinted immediately after the first edition, and continuously until a decade after Yoshitoshi’s death.

Yoshitoshi’s composition in this woodcut print of Gen sanmi – Minamoto no Yorimasa (1106-1180) – is one of the most poignant in the series. Yorimasa served under eight emperors. He was a prolific poet, honourable warrior and skilled archer – he is believed to have slain the mythical Nue. He is remembered for leading Prince Mochihito and the Minamoto clan in the Battle of Uji, the opening conflict in the Genpei Wars (1180-1185). Wounded in the final moments outside Byodo-In, Yorimasa committed seppuku (ritual disembowelling) in a sheltering grove of trees. Yoshitoshi has pictured him just beyond the battle scene, hunched and vulnerable, in the last moments of his life. His armour put aside, the aged Yorimasa writes his final verse:

umoregi no/hana saku koto mo/nakarishi ni/mi no haru hate zo/kanashirakikeru

Like a rotten log/half-buried in the ground/my life, which/has not flowered, comes/to this sad end

As Yorimasa performed his final act, his younger son Kanetsuna was killed by a Taira arrow; his wounded elder son Nakatsuna himself committed seppuku beside his father’s corpse. What brilliant bravery, and yet what carnage and destruction.

Why did Yoshitoshi turn from pro-Imperial reportage to the subjects and sensibilities of Edo for these final projects? As atonement for the vulgar transgressions of his mid-career? Or because subjects of military history or Japanese folklore might offer a leavening antidote to the changes that threatened to alter his world? The heroes of earlier Japan certainly offered exemplary models of loyalty, dignity, and valour to the new milieu of Tokyo. In any case, the fine design, engaging themes and tour de force technical excellence of his last works established rich examples for the generation that followed him.

Source: David Bell, 'A new vision: modern Japanese prints from the Heriot collection', Tuhinga 31 (forthcoming; due 2020).

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art   May 2019