Takenaka Shigeharu and Konoshita Hideyoshi, No. 11 from the series Newly Selected Records of the Taikō Hideyoshi (Shinsen Taikōki)
新撰太閤記
- Date:
- 1883
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Source:
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
新撰太閤記
This 1883 print by Utagawa Toyonobu, numbered No. 11 within the Shinsen Taikōki (Newly Selected Records of the Taikō Hideyoshi), depicts the encounter between Takenaka Shigeharu (Hanbei) and Konoshita Hideyoshi (the future Toyotomi Hideyoshi). Held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession sc186217, object 254985), the print captures one of the canonical moments in the Hideyoshi legend: the recruitment of Takenaka Hanbei, the brilliant strategist whose service to Hideyoshi from the 1560s onward became a model of the warlord-tactician partnership in Japanese popular history. The composition belongs to Toyonobu's mature mid-1880s style, with bright aniline reds and a tight figural drawing inherited from his teacher Toyohara Kunichika and ultimately from the Utagawa school's nineteenth-century actor-print tradition. The Shinsen Taikōki served the Meiji popular audience as both entertainment and historical instruction, and the numbered sequence within the series allowed collectors to assemble a coherent biographical narrative of Japan's second great unifier. The series' visual interpretation of Takenaka Hanbei as the patient counselor to the energetic young Hideyoshi typifies the Meiji [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) treatment of the Sengoku unification.
新撰太閤記
1883
Color woodblock print
尾州桶狭間合戦
December 25, 1882
Color woodblock print
新撰太閤記
1883
Color woodblock print
新撰太閤記
1883
Color woodblock print
Takenaka Shigeharu and Konoshita Hideyoshi, No. 11 from the series Newly Selected Records of the Taikō Hideyoshi (Shinsen Taikōki) (新撰太閤記) was created by Utagawa Toyonobu (歌川豊宣) in 1883.