Battle of Shijo Nawate

Catalog note / 解説

This print, entitled <i>Kyoto Shijo Nawate Gassen</i> (‘The battle of Shijo Nawate at Kyoto’), is the type of popular print that stimulated national pride in the legacy of the samurai during the 19th century. The gory battle scene depicts one of the ferocious battles of the wars of the Nambokucho period. The hero Kusunoki Masatsura is seen fighting against the army of Ashikaga Takauji in 1348. Before the battle Masatsura famously wrote a poem using an arrowhead, on the doors of the Nyorin-ji temple in Kyoto; the poem can still be seen today. The battle of Shijo Nawate took place during the period when Japan had two claimants to the imperial throne and the country was plunged into civil war.…