THE WARRIOR
Under the skilled teaching of his mentor, Kuniyoshi, Yoshitoshi
perfected and excelled in his illustration of warriors and famous historic battles.
In the Moon series, Yoshitoshi celebrates the heroes and villains of
the intense period of civil wars between the 12th and 15th
centuries. For more than four hundred
years, rivalries between powerful military clans transformed the peaceful Heian
court into a world dominated by blood, vengeance and the pursuit of military
glory. By the late 19th
century, it was the samurai class that suffered most from the changes brought
on by modernization. Yoshitoshi,
who himself was born into a low-ranking samurai family, understood and sympathized
with the deterioration of the warrior’s way of life and knew that his audience
would be drawn to the heroes who symbolized a strong and virile Japan.
A warrior’s fame, however, was not always gained through
a successful military campaign. Central to Japanese tradition, and reflected
in Yoshitosi’s prints, is the individual who reaches heroic status through a
failed struggle against overwhelming odds.
Faced with defeat, the warrior/hero will typically take his or her own
life in order to avoid the indignity of capture. Such purity of purpose and single-minded sincerity is the essence
of the archetype. The myth of the
failed hero is the equivalent of the universal concept of the fallen god who
is resurrected so that he may dwell in a transcendent world – a world representing
the perfection of those ideals for which he struggled on earth.
Having fought in the Emperor’s cause,
[I know my end is near]
What Joy to die like the tinted leaves
that fall in Tatsuda
Before they have been spoiled by autumn rains!
Saigo Takamori