Matsushita Kahei and Konoshita Tōkichirō, from the series Newly Selected Records of the Taikō Hideyoshi (Shinsen Taikōki)

This 1883 musha-e (warrior print) by Utagawa Toyonobu opens the Shinsen Taikōki (Newly Selected Records of the Taikō Hideyoshi) series with the encounter between Matsushita Kahei and the young Konoshita Tōkichirō, the future Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who in popular Taikōki tradition first found employment as a foot-servant in Matsushita's household at Kunō Castle. Held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession sc186216, object 254984), the print is one of the foundational sheets in the series and frames Hideyoshi's biography in the bottom-up narrative beloved of Meiji popular publishers: the great unifier of Japan begins his career as a low-ranking retainer, and the moral lesson, energetically traced for the early-Meiji audience, is one of merit-based ascent through service and loyalty. Toyonobu's composition uses the bright aniline reds and purples that distinguished Meiji color printing from the more muted palettes of the late Edo period, and his figures are tightly drawn in the Utagawa school's mature warrior-print style. The Shinsen Taikōki was a major publishing venture of the early 1880s that retold the entire Hideyoshi legend across dozens of sheets, and the MFA Boston's Matsushita Kahei sheet is one of the earliest narrative episodes in that arc.