The Five Tiger Generals of the Tales of the Water Margin (Suikoden Goko Shogun)

This [surimono](/glossary/surimono) [shikishiban](/glossary/shikishiban) pentaptych assembles the Five Tiger Generals of the Tales of the Water Margin, the heroic bandit-warriors of the Chinese novel Shuihu zhuan that became enormously popular in Edo-period Japan through Takizawa Bakin and Katsushika Hokusai's celebrated illustrated editions. Held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated to around 1828, the pentaptych is among the most ambitious of Gakutei's surimono projects, with five sheets working together as a coherent multi-panel composition rendered in metallic pigments and dense color overlay. The Suikoden, with its sprawling cast of one hundred and eight heroes, was the great vernacular novel of the day, and the Five Tiger Generals, including Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Ma Chao, and Huang Zhong, occupied a place in the Edo imagination comparable to that of the Western Knights of the Round Table. By rendering them as a surimono pentaptych for a kyoka circle, Gakutei translates the masculine heroic imagery of the Chinese novel into the precious format of the privately-commissioned print, where the same warriors who appear elsewhere in raucous full-color [musha-e](/glossary/musha-e) take on the quiet refinement of a connoisseur's object.