Yasukuni jinja daisai no zu 靖國神社大祭之圖

Woodblock print ; English title: The Grand Festival at Yasukuni Shrine ; Dimension: Vertical ôban triptych, 14½ x 30 in. ; Date: ca.1885 ; The Melikian Collection’s triptych print of The Grand Festival at Yasukuni Shrine (Yasukuni jinja daisai no zu, 靖國神社大祭之圖) reveals the wide-spread changes following the Meiji restoration. After brutally squashing all rebelling samurai (and their horses), Emperor Meiji commissioned the Yasukuni shrine (yasukuni-jinja, 靖国神社) in 1869 to commemorate those who died bringing about the Meiji restoration, and eventually all others who died in service to Japan.1 The artist, Shinohara Kiyooki, created this print in the mid 1880s, a few years after the shrine’s completion. It clearly reflects the drastic changes in Japanese culture: the samurai are replaced by men in Western military uniform, the horses are of Western breeding, shod with iron horse shoes and bedecked in western-style saddles and stirrups. Some traditional remnants linger, such as the use of white horses to denote important officials, and the importance of the horse in ceremonial matters in general. Overall, however, over a thousand years of tradition and horse culture have been quietly done away with, and the Japanese horse is as absent as the samurai. Susie Anderson 1 John Dower, “Throwing Off Asia: Woodblock Prints of Domestic ‘Westernization’ (1868-1912),” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/throwing_off_asia_01/toa_essay03.html Other information (library catalogue, links to websites etc.): Almost identical to the print owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/the-grand-festival-at-yasukuni-shrine-yasukuni-jinja-daisai-no-zu-161343 (slight color variations between the two, date left blank on the Melikian version)