The Battle of Nagashino: The Death of Yamagata Saburōhei Masakage (Nagashino kassen Yamagata Saburōhei Masakage uchijini no zu)

Produced in 1868 at the turbulent dawn of the Meiji period, this woodblock print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi commemorates the death in battle of the Takeda general Yamagata Saburōhei Masakage during the legendary engagement at Nagashino in 1575. The Battle of Nagashino, in which Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu used massed arquebus fire to break the famed Takeda cavalry, was a foundational episode in the consolidation of warring-states Japan, and it remained a touchstone subject for late Edo and early Meiji warrior prints. Yoshitoshi depicts the fall of Yamagata with characteristic intensity: the wounded general drives his horse forward through a hail of musket smoke, gripping his spear as blood spills across his armor. The carver's handling of cross-hatched gunfire and dense pattern in the lacquered cuirass demonstrates the technical sophistication that distinguished the artist's [musha-e](/glossary/musha-e) from those of less ambitious contemporaries. Designed in the very year of the Meiji Restoration, the sheet reflects an early Meiji [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) environment in which the recent military upheavals lent new urgency to historical battle imagery. It also belongs to the formative period of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's career, preceding the dark cycles of the 1860s and the later masterworks such as One Hundred Aspects of the Moon for which he is now best known. This impression is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, where additional catalogue information is available at collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O93040.