Usa hachiman sha kei, Wake no Kiyomaro ason 宇佐八幡社景 和気清麿朝臣 / Gekko zuihitsu 月耕随筆

This print belongs to Gekko zuihitsu (月耕随筆, "Gekko's Random Sketches"), a multi-volume album in which Ogata Gekko compiled woodblock-printed drawings of historical, literary, and legendary subjects. The image depicts the courtier Wake no Kiyomaro (733–799) at the Usa Hachiman Shrine in Kyushu, where in 769 he was dispatched to receive the oracle that thwarted the monk Dōkyō's attempt to seize the imperial throne — an episode central to the Meiji-era revival of imperial-loyalist historical narratives. Gekko renders the courtier in formal kariginu robes set against the shrine's architecture, with the dual title (景 / kei, "view," pairing place and figure) signalling the album's combination of meisho-e and historical portraiture. The Gekko zuihitsu series, issued in the 1880s–1890s, was self-conducted research as much as commercial print, and reflects Gekko's largely self-taught study of yamato-e painting traditions alongside the more commercial bijin-ga and war prints that made him famous.