** Another excellent impression from the series. Key scene: Hakoōmaru meets his father's murderer · first encounter of the Soga revenge · We compared this sheet with impressions held in museum collections, and this example way exceeds them in paper, colour and impression quality. This is the turning point of the whole story: the young Gorō comes face to face for the first time with the man who killed his father. ** 歌川広重 — UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE (1797–1858) Titel: Hakoōmaru Meets Kudō Saemon Suketsune (箱王丸・工藤左衛門祐経) Series: Illustrated Tale of the Soga Brothers (曾我物語圖會, Soga monogatari zue) Text: Abridged narrative by Ryūkatei Tanekazu (柳下亭種員, 1807–1858) Date: c. 1845–46 (Kōka 2–3) Publisher: Ibaya Senzaburō (伊場屋仙三郎, Dansendō) Censor: Muramatsu (村松), round seal beside the signature Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), polychrome (nishiki-e) Format: Ōban tate-e, [38 × 26 cm] Signature: Hiroshige ga (広重画) __________________________________________________________ CONDITION A strong, full-coloured impression with a crisp keyblock. The colours keep their full vibrancy. The paper is firm and supple with minor creases along the bottom margin consistent with normal handling. Overall very good. __________________________________________________________ The Scene: Face to Face with the Enemy After their father's death, the younger boy Hakoōmaru was sent by his mother to Hakone Gongen to serve as a temple acolyte (chigo) and train for the priesthood. When Minamoto no Yoritomo came to worship at the shrine, Kudō Saemon Suketsune was in his retinue. This was the man who had arranged the killing of Hakoōmaru's father. Tanekazu's text tells what happened. Suketsune called the boy over, introduced himself as a kinsman and gave him a short sword with a red-sandalwood hilt (akagi-zukuri no tantō). Hakoōmaru was only eight years old. Inwardly he swore that he could not share the same sky as his father's killer and that he would strike him down once he was grown. He tried to hide it, but his anger showed on his face. Tanekazu compares him to the young snake that already shows its nature: even as a child, the future Soga Gorō was a danger to Suketsune. The name labels on the sheet identify Hakoōmaru (箱王丸) and Kudō Saemon Suketsune (工藤左衛門祐經). Behind them stand the great Kamakura lords of Yoritomo's retinue: Hōjō Tokimasa (北條時政), Wada Yoshimori (和田義盛), Kajiwara Kagetoki (梶原景時), Kajiwara Kagesue (梶原景季) and Hatakeyama Shigetada (畠山重忠). Several of these men play a part later in the story. ______________________________________________________ The Soga Revenge — Eighteen Years in the Making The Soga monogatari grew out of a real vendetta of the early Kamakura period. In 1176 Kawazu Saburō Sukeyasu was killed in an ambush arranged by his kinsman Kudō Suketsune over a disputed inheritance. His widow remarried into the Soga family, and the boys grew up under the Soga name. The elder came of age as Soga Jūrō Sukenari and the younger as Soga Gorō Tokimune. In 1193, during Yoritomo's great hunt at the foot of Mount Fuji, the brothers broke into Suketsune's quarters at night in a rainstorm and killed him. Jūrō died in the fighting that followed, and Gorō was captured and executed. In the Edo period Soga plays opened the kabuki season in Edo every New Year, and the brothers stood as models of filial devotion. _________________________________________________________ The Series — A Landscape Master Tells a Story The Soga monogatari zue retells the tale in a sequence of upright ōban sheets, issued around 1845–46 mainly by Ibaya Senzaburō, with texts by the popular fiction writer Ryūkatei Tanekazu. It belongs to the years after the Tenpō Reforms of 1842, when prints of actors and courtesans were restricted and historical and moral subjects gave publishers a safe field. What makes the series distinctive is how much of each sheet Hiroshige gives to the setting. The landscape carries the mood of the scene as much as the figures do.