The Kanpaku (regent) Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, 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, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession sc186227, object 254995), depicts the kanpaku (regent) Hideyoshi in conference with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the meeting that would shape Japanese political history for the following two and a half centuries. Hideyoshi's accommodation with Ieyasu, formalized after the 1584 Komaki-Nagakute campaign in which the two had fought to a draw, secured the Toyotomi consolidation of power but planted the seeds of the Tokugawa ascendancy that would follow Hideyoshi's death in 1598. The Shinsen Taikōki's treatment of this meeting is particularly charged because it shows the late-Sengoku political moment at which the unification narrative pivots from the Toyotomi line to the Tokugawa line, with the eventual founder of the Edo shogunate already in the picture during the apex of his predecessor's career. Toyonobu's composition treats the meeting as a stately two-figure encounter with the bright aniline reds and purples of his mature Meiji color register, and the careful inscription of both historical names anchors the print to a specific moment in the foundation narrative of early-modern Japan.
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
The Kanpaku (regent) Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, 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.