Katō Kiyomasa, 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 sc186225, object 254993), depicts the warrior Katō Kiyomasa, one of the seven spears of Shizugatake and one of the most celebrated of Hideyoshi's military commanders. Katō Kiyomasa was the architect of Kumamoto Castle and the leader of the Toyotomi invasion of Korea in the 1590s, where his exploits in the Imjin War made him a folk hero in the Edo and Meiji periods. Toyonobu's portrait shows Kiyomasa in the iconic single-figure warrior pose: armored, weapons displayed, the historical figure shown as the embodiment of samurai martial virtue. The composition exemplifies the way the Shinsen Taikōki balanced its battle-scene narrative with single-figure character studies of Hideyoshi's principal generals, giving the Meiji audience a visual roster of the Toyotomi inner circle. Kiyomasa's anti-Christian and pro-Buddhist convictions, as well as his exploits in Korea, made him a particularly potent symbol for Meiji-era nationalism, and Toyonobu's portrait belongs to that broader cultural recovery of the Sengoku unifiers as proto-national heroes.