Hashiba Chikuzen no Kami Hideyoshi and Kuroda Takayoshi, from the series Newly Selected Records of the Taikō Hideyoshi (Shinsen Taikōki)

This 1883 print by Utagawa Toyonobu, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession sc186219, object 254987), depicts Hashiba Chikuzen no Kami Hideyoshi, the future taikō under one of his mid-career stage names, in conference with Kuroda Takayoshi (Yoshitaka, known to history as Kuroda Kanbei or Josui), the brilliant strategist whose advice helped Hideyoshi outmaneuver his rivals after Oda Nobunaga's death at the Honnō-ji Incident. The Hashiba name marks the print as belonging to the period before Hideyoshi's elevation to the Toyotomi surname in 1586, and the composition captures the strategic-counsel pairing that defined much of his mid-1580s campaign biography. Toyonobu's treatment uses the bright aniline reds and purples that distinguish Meiji-era warrior prints, and his careful inscription of the historical names anchors the print to a specific moment in the Sengoku unification narrative. Kuroda Kanbei was one of the most romanticized strategist figures in late-nineteenth-century Japanese popular historical writing, and the Shinsen Taikōki's framing of his relationship with Hideyoshi belongs to that broader cultural valorization of the warlord-tactician partnership.