Battle of Okehazama in Bishū, Owari Province (Bishū Okehazama kassen)

This musha-e by Utagawa Toyonobu, dated December 25, 1882 and held by the Harvard Art Museums (accession HUAM-INV017330), depicts the Battle of Okehazama, the 1560 engagement in which the young Oda Nobunaga ambushed and killed the powerful Imagawa Yoshimoto in a ravine in Owari Province. The battle was one of the foundational episodes of the Sengoku unification narrative and a touchstone for Meiji popular history, with Nobunaga's daring strike against a much larger army serving as the archetypal Japanese example of decisive military leadership through surprise and risk. Toyonobu's image is one of several sheets in his Bishū Okehazama kassen series and is the December 1882 issue that opens the project. The composition uses the panoramic battle-scene format favored by Meiji warrior-print designers, with cavalry, foot soldiers, and standards arrayed across a landscape setting that gives full play to Toyonobu's mature command of crowd composition. The bright aniline reds and purples of the Meiji color register dominate the costume detail, and the print's drawing belongs to the Utagawa-school warrior-print tradition that Toyonobu inherited through his teacher Toyohara Kunichika.