Tokimune (Soga Goro) Sneaking into Yoritomo's Residence (Tokimune Kamakura-dono no kariya o sawagasu)
- Date:
- 1891
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; oban triptych
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tokimune (Soga Goro) Sneaking into Yoritomo's Residence, dated 1891 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection, draws on the long-running Soga brothers vendetta narrative that anchored generations of Edo and Meiji theatrical performance. Soga Goro Tokimune, the younger of the brothers, here approaches the encampment of the shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo by night, a moment of furtive movement that printmakers traditionally treated with a low-key palette and a strong sense of moonlit threat. Migita Toshihide, a Yoshitoshi student, had absorbed his teacher's late style of nocturnal warrior prints, and his Meiji prints in this historical-theatrical vein continue that lineage. The Art Institute records the print as a single sheet within a vertical format, and the institutional record supplies the date and the romanised subtitle that often guided collectors. Toshihide's design here is closer to the legend-and-stage subjects that publishers wanted to flank the bijin and battle prints in their catalogues. The figure of Tokimune is typically rendered in a half-crouch, sword drawn or partially concealed, with architectural cues, a gate, a board fence, an eave, used to fix the location. As an early-1890s sheet it predates the explosion of senso-e that Toshihide would produce during the Sino-Japanese War later in the decade, and it shows him working at full strength in the historical mode that grounded his training.
Tokimune (Soga Goro) Sneaking into Yoritomo's Residence (Tokimune Kamakura-dono no kariya o sawagasu) was created by Migita Toshihide (右田年英) in 1891.
