A Glance at the Distinguished Figures of the Meiji Period (Meiji meiyo ichiran)

Held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and accessible through the ukiyo-e.org image archive, this 1877 nishiki-e portrait print, Meiji meiyo ichiran (A Glance at the Distinguished Figures of the Meiji Period), arranges a gallery of contemporary public figures in the format that had recently become popular for portraying the new political and cultural elite of post-Restoration Japan. The print belongs to a Meiji genre of celebrity portraiture that responded to public curiosity about the politicians, military commanders, scholars, and entrepreneurs who were directing the new state's modernization program. Toshinobu's composition arranges the figures with attention to costume and physiognomy, producing recognizable images of the leading personalities of the late 1870s, often in the hybrid attire of frock-coat and traditional court robes that distinguished the transitional generation. The print belongs to the same documentary impulse that animated his Satsuma Rebellion series and his Chōya shimbun newspaper prints, but here the subject is consolidated national leadership rather than military conflict, marking a complementary visualization of the new Meiji order. The MFA's impression preserves the original Meiji aniline color palette and the publisher's seal, and it stands as an important record of how the Tokyo print industry contributed to the public construction of Meiji political iconography in the years immediately following the formal end of the samurai-class rebellions.