YOSHIKANE • 一ノ谷の源氏と平家の大戦 • 日本木版画 • - Japan - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Yoshikane (芳兼), pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Also recorded under the name Tachō (田蝶).
Title: 源平一ノ谷大合戦図 Genpei Ichi-no-Tani ōkassen zu — "The Great Battle of the Minamoto and Taira at Ichi-no-Tani"

Subject: Two red role cartouches name the figures:
– Left sheet: 熊谷次郎直実 Kumagai no Jirō Naozane, in helmet and a purple-and-white striped horo cloak, galloping along the shoreline on a black horse
– Centre sheet: 無官大夫敦盛 Mukan no Tayū Atsumori, riding out into the water toward the Taira ships, his own red horo billowing behind him

Beyond them the Taira fleet lies at anchor under red pennants, with the Suma coastline and a sunset-red horizon behind.

Format: Two ōban sheets, left and centre of an original triptych. each approx. 36 × 24.5 cm.
Technique: Nishiki-e (full-colour woodblock print)
Date: Kōka–Kaei period, ca. 1847–1852
Signature: 一勇齋門人芳兼画図 Ichiyūsai monjin Yoshikane ga zu
Publisher: Nishimuraya, Bakurochō nichōme
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Condition: Colour and impression are good. The paper carries a number of issues: mild overall toning, mild soiling, and mild creasing concentrated in the margins, with edge wear and small irregularities to the sheet edges. Sold frankly as a collector's and study piece rather than a display-ready sheet, and offered as two sheets only — the third sheet of the triptych is lacking. Please refer to the images for full detail!
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About the print

This is the single most retold moment in the Heike monogatari. At Ichi-no-Tani in the second month of 1184 the Taira are driven from their camp to the boats, and Kumagai Naozane, riding the beach for a worthy opponent, sees a young horseman making for the fleet and calls him back — to turn your back is a disgrace. The rider turns. Kumagai pulls him down, tears off the helmet, and finds a boy of about sixteen with powdered teeth, roughly the age of his own son. He wants to let him go; his own troops are behind him and he cannot. Afterwards he finds a flute tucked in the boy's armour, learns that this was Taira no Atsumori, and eventually takes the tonsure. Mukan no Tayū — "the courtier holding no office" — is the epithet by which Atsumori is known, and it is what the cartouche on the centre sheet gives instead of a rank.

Yoshikane composes it wide and empty, which is the interesting choice here: no melee, no massed troops, just the enormous flat blue of the Inland Sea with two riders at opposite ends of it and the fleet stranded in between. That handling of space — the great sweep of water, the striped horo ballooning out like a sail, the red band at the horizon — comes straight out of the Kuniyoshi studio, where Yoshikane trained. He is a minor figure of that workshop and his sheets appear far less often than his master's; complete triptychs by him are genuinely hard to come by, which is why partial sets like this one still find their way to collectors of Kuniyoshi-school musha-e.