Artist: Utagawa Yoshitora 歌川芳虎 (act. c. 1836–1880s), signed Ichimōsai Yoshitora ga (一猛齋芳虎画) Title: 生田杜大合戦之圖 — Ikuta-mori ōkassen no zu, "Picture of the Great Battle at Ikuta Forest" Subject: The fighting at Ikuta-no-mori, February 1184 — the eastern front of the Battle of Ichi-no-tani, where the Minamoto assaulted the Taira stockade held by Taira no Tomomori Principal figures: Centre: Kajiwara Genta Kagesue (梶原源太景季), sword raised, fighting inside the palisade A second Kajiwara cartouche appears on the right-hand sheet, with a mounted warrior driving back in through the gate Further named combatants are identified in yellow cartouches across all three sheets Date: c. 1850s Publisher: Ebisuya Shōshichi 恵比壽屋庄七, Teriforichō 照降町 (imprint at lower left of the left-hand sheet) Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga) — nishiki-e (polychrome) Format: Ōban tate-e triptych (three sheets), approx. 36 × 73 cm (14¼ × 28¾ in.) Signature: Signed Ichimōsai Yoshitora ga (一猛齋芳虎画) on each sheet -------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPRESSION & COLOURS An excellent impression across all three sheets. Colours are very well preserved: the deep blue of the sea, the graded bokashi of the sky, the pink and vermilion of the banners and horse tack, and the patterned brocade of the armour. The fine detail holds throughout — the woven timber of the palisade, the spiked abatis, the lacing of the armour plates, and the fleet of Taira ships strung along the horizon. PAPER: Three separate ōban sheets. The paper is sound and supple with nothing significant to note. Some remnants of backing on the verso, unobtrusive.. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Scene — Ikuta Forest, 1184 In the second month of 1184 the Taira made their stand at Ichi-no-tani, west of modern Kobe, with their fleet drawn up behind them in the bay. The fortress had two gates. The western one at Ichi-no-tani is the famous one, where Yoshitsune came down the Hiyodorigoe pass. This print shows the other: Ikuta-no-mori, the eastern gate, where Taira no Tomomori commanded and where the main Minamoto army under Noriyori attacked head-on. Yoshitora gives the whole battlefield at once. The Taira defences run across the middle of the composition — a palisade of lashed timber, a stone rampart, and beyond it a dense belt of sakamogi, the felled-branch abatis that the Heike raised against cavalry. Behind that is the sea, with the Taira ships waiting. Warriors climb and fall along the barricade in the middle distance; in the foreground the fighting has already broken through into the compound. The Tale of the Heike gives Ikuta its own set-pieces, and they are the ones the print-buying public knew. The Kawara brothers went over the abatis on foot before dawn, ahead of the order, and were shot down. Kajiwara Kagetoki, hearing of it, charged in with five hundred riders — then, finding his son Kagesue missing, turned and rode back into the enemy alone to get him out. That episode, Kajiwara no nidogake, "Kajiwara's second charge," is the one this design is built around. Kagesue holds the centre of the middle sheet; the horseman driving back through the gate on the right is his father coming for him. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Source — Ikuta in the Heike Ikuta-no-mori was already an old poetic name before it was a battlefield — Sei Shōnagon names it among the celebrated forests in the Pillow Book. The Genpei fighting attached a second layer of association to it, and the site keeps them still: the grounds of Ikuta Shrine preserve the "plum of the quiver," from the story of Kagesue breaking a flowering branch and setting it in his arrow-quiver before the charge. The subject was worked repeatedly by the Utagawa school, Kuniyoshi foremost among them, and Yoshitora's triptych belongs to that tradition of large multi-sheet battle compositions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yoshitora — Warrior Prints and Yokohama-e Utagawa Yoshitora trained under Utagawa Kuniyoshi and worked in Edo from the late 1830s. He was a prolific designer of historical battle triptychs through the 1840s and '50s, and from 1860 became one of the most productive artists of Yokohama-e, the prints depicting foreigners and Western goods arriving through the newly opened port. His warrior scenes are valued for their crowded, legible action and the clear identification of named combatants.