Fujiwara no Yasumasa Playing His Flute in the Moonlight

This luminous ōban triptych from about 1883 depicts the Heian court nobleman and renowned flutist Fujiwara no Yasumasa walking alone at night, his music charming even the bandit Hakamadare into abandoning his attack. Yoshitoshi renders the moonlit road with subtle atmospheric washes, the pale disk of the moon presiding over the scene as the nobleman's flute song carries through the darkness. The composition is one of Yoshitoshi's most celebrated evocations of Heian elegance—a theme he would return to repeatedly in his later career.