Abolition of the Han Domains and Establishment of Prefectures

Abolition of the Han Domains and Establishment of Prefectures (廃藩置県) is one of Kobori Tomone's preparatory studies for the cycle of wall paintings he contributed to the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery (Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan) at the Meiji Jingū Gaien in Tokyo. Dated to about 1927, executed in colour on paper at a manageable hanging-scroll scale (54.0 × 53.5 cm), and now held by the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts (accession 2826) in Tomone's home prefecture, the study reconstructs the moment of July 14, 1871, when the imperial edict abolishing the daimyō domains and establishing the modern prefectural system was read aloud at the imperial palace by Sanjō Sanetomi, the senior court noble who served as the first Daijō-daijin (Chancellor of the Realm) of the Meiji government. The painting is a key document of Tomone's working method on the Memorial Picture Gallery commission: the study fixes the composition, the costume, and the figural relationships that would be enlarged onto canvas for the final wall painting, allowing the artist to test the historical reconstruction on paper before committing it to mineral pigment on the gallery scale. The figures are shown in the formal court dress of the early Meiji period — the colourful sokutai-derived robes and lacquered black headgear of the senior nobles — rather than in the Western military and civil uniforms that would replace them within a decade, and the painting thus captures the specific liminal moment at which Japan's new imperial state was still being staged in the ceremonial vocabulary of the old court. The work entered the Tochigi Museum's collection as part of the institution's commitment to its native-son artist.