Shigemori and Yoshihira Battling outside the Shishinden Palace

This 1892 color woodcut, comprising two panels of a triptych and held by the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, is a musha-e (warrior print) depicting the Heian-period combat between Taira no Shigemori and Minamoto no Yoshihira outside the Shishinden, the ceremonial hall of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. The encounter, drawn from the Heiji disturbance of 1159-1160 as recounted in the Heiji Monogatari and later kabuki adaptations, was a standard subject of Meiji historical illustration and gave designers a vehicle for restaging classical narrative within the visual idiom of modern woodblock printing. Watanabe Nobukazu's design places the two warriors at the visual center of the composition in elaborate armor and helmet, with the architecture of the Shishinden rendered in detail and the encircling cherry trees signaling the seasonal setting of the historical episode. The print was published by Yokoyama Ryōhachi, and it shows Nobukazu working in the same dynamic triptych vocabulary, dramatic foreground figures, choreographed middle-ground action, and an evocative backdrop, that he would soon apply to the modern war prints of the Sino-Japanese conflict. It is held under accession number 1963.30.5663 at the Legion of Honor.