Famous Horses of History (Ehon komagatake), vol.1

Famous Horses of History, also known as Ehon komagatake, is an illustrated book associated with Kitao Shigemasa and held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, with the museum recording a date of 1802 for this volume. The work belongs to the lively Edo tradition of ehon, illustrated books whose images and texts combined to teach, entertain, and document subjects of cultural importance. Horses occupied a special place in Japanese visual and martial culture, associated with the warrior class, with imperial ceremonies such as Hakuba no Sechie, with classical poetry, and with the rich folklore of supernatural and semi-historical mounts. By dedicating a volume to famous horses of history, Shigemasa and his collaborators provided readers with a visual compendium of celebrated steeds drawn from chronicles, legends, and military epics. As founder of the Kitao school, Shigemasa was particularly well prepared for such a project, with his proven ability to handle animals, figures, and historical scenes in concert. The Victoria and Albert Museum preserves the book as part of its broader holdings of Edo ukiyo-e printed materials in London. The drawing in Ehon komagatake is likely to have favored the brisk, legible style characteristic of Kitao school illustration, in which animals and human attendants are integrated into balanced page compositions that support both image and accompanying text. Within Shigemasa's career, the volume sits among his later projects and confirms his ongoing engagement with bookmaking even as his single-sheet print output was complemented by the next generation of Kitao school designers, providing a valuable record of late Edo period visual culture and its enduring interest in equestrian subjects.