The nobleman Wake no Kiyomaro visiting the Usa Hachiman Shrine

This print depicts Wake no Kiyomaro (733–799), the Nara-period courtier celebrated in later Japanese historiography for his journey to the Usa Hachiman Shrine in Kyushu in 769. According to the standard account, Kiyomaro was dispatched to verify an oracle that the priest Dōkyō should ascend the throne; he returned with the contrary divine pronouncement that only members of the imperial line could rule, an act regarded by Meiji nationalists as exemplary loyalty. Gekko would typically render such a subject with Kiyomaro in court robes approaching the shrine precincts, the architecture suggested through restrained linework and the figure given prominence against atmospheric ground. The composition belongs to the historical-loyalist genre that flourished under Meiji-era ideological emphasis on imperial fidelity, a vein Gekko worked steadily alongside his war prints. Production followed nishiki-e convention, with bokashi grading the sky and ground, and the print likely circulated as part of a series on patriotic exemplars from Japanese history.