Satō Masakiyo Hunting the Magic Two-Tailed Tiger (Satō Masakiyo no tora-gari no zu)

This 1860 [triptych](/glossary/triptych) by Utagawa Kunitsuna I, recorded in the Art of Japan dealer inventory (item 09134385), depicts Satō Masakiyo — better known in popular legend as Katō Kiyomasa, the celebrated late-sixteenth-century daimyo and general of Toyotomi Hideyoshi — hunting the magic two-tailed tiger (myōkohaku) during his campaign on the Korean peninsula. The tiger-hunting episode was one of the most enduring legends attached to Kiyomasa: the story, drawn from the Toyotomi-era Korean campaigns, recounted his single-handed combat with a giant tiger that threatened his camp, an event that became emblematic of his fearless martial character and that supplied Edo-period popular literature, kabuki, and [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) with a recurring narrative subject.