Uesugi Terutora Nyūdō Kenshin, from the series A Complete Picture of the Great Battle of Kawanakajima between Two Generals of Kō and Etsu (Kō-Etsu ryōshō Kawanakajima ōgassen zen)

This color woodblock print by Utagawa Kunitsuna I, held by Waseda University Library (accession number 012-1417), depicts Uesugi Terutora Nyūdō Kenshin — the celebrated mid-sixteenth-century daimyo of Echigo (modern Niigata) Province who became one of the most celebrated samurai commanders of the Sengoku era — from the series A Complete Picture of the Great Battle of Kawanakajima between Two Generals of Kō and Etsu (Kō-Etsu ryōshō Kawanakajima ōgassen zen). The Kawanakajima clashes, fought between Uesugi Kenshin of Echigo and Takeda Shingen of Kai (modern Yamanashi) Province on the Kawanakajima plain in Shinano Province during the 1550s and 1560s, were among the most romanticized military encounters of the Sengoku period, generating centuries of popular narrative, dramatic adaptation, and visual representation.

Kenshin, who took Buddhist orders under the religious name Kenshin and who claimed devotion to Bishamonten, the warrior bodhisattva, became a paradigmatic figure of disciplined samurai virtue in Tokugawa-era popular culture. The Kō (an abbreviation for Kai) and Etsu (an abbreviation for Echigo) in the series title identify the two provinces from which the rival armies were drawn, while the description 'great battle' (ōgassen) marks the print as belonging to the senjō-e (battlefield print) subgenre within the broader musha-e tradition.

Kunitsuna's Kawanakajima series participates in the Bakumatsu-era flourishing of musha-e that Kuniyoshi had pioneered in the preceding generation. Waseda University Library's holdings of the print, together with the related sheet of Takeda Shingen and Itagaki Suruga-no-kami (accession number 012-1418) and several other named retainers from the series, document Kunitsuna's contribution to the Bakumatsu musha-e revival that responded to the destabilizing political crises of the 1850s and 1860s by turning dramatically to legendary historical warrior subjects.