Hōjō Yasutoki

Yajima Gōgaku depicts Hōjō Yasutoki (1183-1242), the third regent of the Kamakura shogunate, whom Tokugawa-period moralists celebrated as a model of virtuous warrior governance. Yasutoki was responsible for the Jōei Code of 1232, the first written legal code of the samurai class, and was remembered for his austere personal habits, his respect for learning, and his consultative style of rule - all virtues much promoted in the Confucian revival of the late Edo period. Gōgaku's treatment, in the spare nanga manner with muted colour and emphasis on calligraphic line, removes the figure from the bombast of the late-Edo warrior-print mainstream and presents him instead as a subject for scholarly contemplation. Issued between 1818 and 1830, this small colour woodcut measures roughly 21 by 18 centimetres.