Portrait of Akiyama Nobutomo (One of the Twenty-Four Generals of Takeda Shingen)

Portrait of Akiyama Nobutomo (秋山信友像) is one of the Twenty-Four Generals of Takeda Shingen scrolls Matsumoto Fūko painted for Erin-ji Temple in Yamanashi between 1871 and 1873. Akiyama Nobutomo (1527–1575), often referred to by his official title Akiyama Hōki-no-kami Haruchika, was one of Takeda Shingen's senior commanders and the daimyō of Iwamura Castle in Mino Province during the wars against Oda Nobunaga. After Nobunaga's recapture of Iwamura in 1575 Akiyama was sent to Gifu and executed by crucifixion, a death whose dramatic circumstances secured him a permanent place in the iconography of the Twenty-Four Generals. Fūko depicts him in formal armour of the Tenshō period in the standard linear, ink-and-light-colour manner Kikuchi Yōsai had codified for historical portraiture, identifying him by name and family crest in the small cartouche in the upper register. The painting is part of the foundational commission of Fūko's career — the twenty-four scrolls he produced at Erin-ji in the early 1870s established his reputation as the leading Meiji-era painter of Sengoku military subjects and laid the basis for his subsequent work in historical-narrative painting (rekishiga) over the next half-century.