Satomi Hakkenden

Born in the 1820s, Hirosada was an artist of the Japanese Edo-period ukiyo-e (floating world) movement. From the end of the 1840s to the early 1850s, Hirosada led the movement’s Osaka school. This swordfight scene is from Kyokutei Bakin’s 106-volume Japanese epic Nansō Satomi Hakkenden (translated as The Eight Dog Chronicles), written and published between 1814 and 1842. Extremely popular when it was published, the epic fell out of favour after the Meiji restoration in 1868 and only became fashionable again at the beginning of the 20th century. It has now been revived in manga versions.