30, Oda Nobunaga

Oda Nobunaga — the 16th-century warlord who nearly unified Japan before his assassination — appears here as plate 30 in a historical figure series Kiyochika produced in December 1885. Nobunaga is rendered in Sengoku-period armour, his bearing conveying the imperious confidence that made him the subject of endless literary and theatrical treatments in the Meiji period. Kiyochika's historical portraiture series drew on kabuki conventions while infusing the figures with the naturalistic modelling he had absorbed from Western illustration.