YOSHITORA · 樱田门事件 · 刺杀井伊直弼 · 幕末历史 · 三联画 · - 日本 - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Yoshitora (歌川芳虎), art name Mōsai (孟斎), pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Title: 近世樱田之雪 – Kinsei Sakurada no yuki (Snow at Sakurada in Recent Times)
Subject: The Sakuradamon Incident, 3rd day of the 3rd month, 1860
Technique: Original woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and colour on paper
Signature: Mōsai ga (left sheet), Mōsai hitsu (right sheet), with seal
Format: Vertical ōban triptych, three separate sheets each approx 37*25cm
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CONDITION

Impression & Colours: A strong impression. Woodgrain visible! The colors shifted blueish due to sun fading. The color palette remains vivid and well saturated.

Paper: The paper is firm but it has some issues including a minor repair on the right sheet. Some light wears on the left sheet and some waviness/creases on the upper margin of each sheet. The paper is in a fair condition. Please check the images carefully before bidding!
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About the Print

On the morning of the 3rd day of the 3rd month of 1860, the Tairō Ii Naosuke, the most powerful official of the Tokugawa shogunate, was assassinated outside the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle on his way to the Doll Festival audience. The attackers were seventeen rōnin from the Mito domain and one from Satsuma, who opposed Ii's signing of the 1858 commercial treaty with the United States and his purge of critics in the Ansei Purge. Out of the 60 samurai guarding Ii, four died in combat and four died within days of their wounds; the Satsuma samurai Arimura Jizaemon decapitated Ii and then took his own life. Heavy snow had fallen overnight, which was unusual for Edo so late in the season, and the image of blood on snow made the event a lasting subject for prints, plays and later film. The incident is widely seen as the start of a decade of political violence that ended with the fall of the shogunate.

Under the shogunate, depicting current political events was forbidden, and early Meiji prints of the incident still disguised it. Yoshitoshi's triptych of about 1871 in the MFA Boston uses a poetic title, and the Worcester Art Museum describes his 1874 version as reflecting the last wave of reluctance to name the event directly. This triptych goes further: the cartouches give the real names of the participants, both the attackers, including Arimura Jizaemon, Kurosawa Chūzaburō, Hasuda Ichigorō, Sano Takenosuke and Saitō Kenmotsu, and members of Ii's escort.

Yoshitora was one of Kuniyoshi's most prolific pupils, known for warrior prints and for his Yokohama prints of foreigners in the 1860s. He returned to this subject in book form as well: he illustrated the Meiji publication Yayoi no yuki Sakurada shinbun, now held in the Meiji Shinbun Zasshi Bunko at the University of Tokyo.