View of the Issuance of the Constitution

This 1889 woodblock print [triptych](/glossary/triptych), held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession DP147729) and dated to the third month of Meiji 22, depicts the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution on the eleventh of February 1889 — the single most important state ceremony of the early Meiji period. The print shows the Emperor Meiji, in Western military uniform, handing the constitutional document to Prime Minister Kuroda Kiyotaka before the assembled court, the cabinet, the diplomatic corps, and military officers in the throne room of the newly completed Meiji Palace. The Constitution of the Empire of Japan, drafted under Itō Hirobumi after extensive study of European models, established Japan as a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral Diet, a quasi-independent judiciary, and a formal grant of rights and duties to imperial subjects; its promulgation was treated as the founding act of the modern Japanese state and was celebrated across the country with parades, fireworks, and a flood of commemorative prints. Kunitoshi was one of several Meiji designers commissioned to produce visual records of the event, and his triptych is among the most widely reproduced versions, valued both as documentation of the constitutional moment and as a striking specimen of Meiji ceremonial print design. The composition is organised around the central exchange of the document, with the Emperor and Prime Minister framed by a long lateral procession of dignitaries and the elaborate Western-style architecture of the throne room. The print is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's holdings of Meiji-period woodblock prints.