God saves Sanoki no Kami Yorinobu Ason from a dangerous explosion

This print depicts a divine intervention narrative — a deity rescuing the historical figure Sanoki no Kami Yorinobu Ason from an explosion. The subject sits within Yoshitoshi's lifelong engagement with supernatural and miraculous imagery, a vein that runs through his early Wakan hyaku monogatari (One Hundred Ghost Stories from China and Japan, 1865), the late Shinkei sanjūrokkaisen (New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts, 1889–92), and many single-sheet prints of kami, ghosts, and demonic encounters. Compositionally, an explosion offered Yoshitoshi an opportunity for radial energy, debris, and figures caught in mid-motion — a pictorial problem he tended to handle by arranging diagonal forms against a centralized blast and using [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) shading to suggest smoke and concussion. The image stands as evidence of how thoroughly the supernatural and historical were intertwined in Edo and Meiji popular imagination, with woodblock prints serving as a principal visual record of episodes that mixed verifiable biography with hagiographic and folkloric elaboration.