Triptych: Battle of Okehazama in Bishū, Owari Province (Bishū Okehazama kassen)

This 1883 triptych by Utagawa Toyonobu, held by the Harvard Art Museums (accession HUAM-INV017328), is the panoramic three-sheet centerpiece of his Bishū Okehazama kassen project. The triptych format gave Toyonobu the broad canvas needed to portray Oda Nobunaga's 1560 ambush of the Imagawa army at full scale, with cavalry charges, infantry engagements, and the dramatic moment of Imagawa Yoshimoto's death arranged across the three sheets as a single continuous battle scene. The triptych form was central to Meiji warrior-print publishing because the wide horizontal composition matched the new century's appetite for cinematic, narrative-rich historical imagery and gave print designers room to deploy the dense cavalry-and-infantry crowds that defined late-Utagawa musha-e. Toyonobu's careful crowd composition, bright aniline reds and purples, and Utagawa-school figural drawing make the triptych a definitive example of his mature musha-e style. The Okehazama victory was a foundational episode in the Sengoku unification narrative, and the triptych's panoramic treatment positions it as the centerpiece of the early-1880s Meiji visual recovery of the period.