The Earth Spider Slain by Brave Samurai Watanabe no Tauna (center image)

Dated about 1800–1810 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago (accession 1990.607.406), this Katsukawa Shuntei woodblock print is the center sheet of a triptych depicting one of the most famous episodes of Japanese warrior legend: the slaying of the giant earth-spider (tsuchigumo) by Watanabe no Tsuna (sometimes transliterated Tauna in older catalogs). Watanabe no Tsuna (953–1025) was a Heian-period warrior and the chief retainer of Minamoto no Yorimitsu (Raikō), and together with Yorimitsu's other three retainers — the so-called Four Heavenly Kings of Yorimitsu — he became the subject of an extensive cycle of medieval warrior legends. The tsuchigumo, a monstrous earth-spider with supernatural powers, was one of the recurring antagonists of these tales, attacking Yorimitsu and his retainers and ultimately being slain after a heroic battle. The story had been a fixture of Japanese pictorial tradition since the medieval Tsuchigumo emaki (Earth Spider scroll) of the late thirteenth or fourteenth century, and Edo-period woodblock-print designers returned to it repeatedly as one of the canonical subjects for warrior imagery. Shuntei's triptych composition typifies the late-Katsukawa school approach to musha-e (warrior prints) in the early nineteenth century: a multi-sheet dramatic action scene, executed in the bold compositional manner that the school had developed since the 1790s, with mythological monster and armored samurai providing the focal contrast. This print and others like it position Shuntei as an important precursor to the great heroic-warrior series of Utagawa Kuniyoshi in the 1820s and 1830s, which would extend and transform the Katsukawa-school musha-e tradition for a new generation of Edo viewers.