The son who died keeping his father's promise. In 1348, on the field of Shijōnawate, a young commander led a hopelessly outnumbered army against the dominant Ashikaga forces, knowing full well he would not come back. That was Kusunoki Masatsura — son of Kusunoki Masashige, the most revered loyalist in Japanese history, who had himself died for the same doomed Southern Court a dozen years earlier. The father had become the very symbol of loyalty-unto-death. The son picked up the identical banner and walked the identical road.

Before the battle, Masatsura is said to have gone to the imperial tomb and left a death-poem, settling his account with the world in advance. Then he threw his outnumbered men at Kō no Moronao's Ashikaga host and fell alongside his brother, the Kusunoki line spending itself, generation after generation, on a cause it could never win. It's the purest expression of a very Japanese ideal: that the nobility of a stand has nothing to do with whether you can win it. Kuniyoshi's triptych sets the warriors of that battle across its three sheets, the confrontation given the full sweep of the widescreen format.

Noda Shirō (野田四郎), Koshiro Hyōgo (小代兵庫) and Kusunoki Yamato no Kami Masayuki (樟大和守正之) in the 1348 Battle of Shijōnawate (四條畷の戰い, Shijōnawate no tatakai) 1857.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳, 1798-1861)