With the advent of early modern Japan, when the country was finally reunified after a century of war and strife, a great many paintings were produced to
depict wars and battles. These paintings were often commissioned by the new rulers of early modern Japan, the Tokugawa shoguns and their relatives. Some of these battle paintings were about recent battles that the patrons and their fathers had won meritoriously. A large number of them, however,
depicted battles from the distant past, and in particular the Genpei War (1180-1185), a war that was fought five centuries earlier. Using artwork from various important collections, Dr. Gunji’s talk will address the question of why the rulers of the Tokugawa period commissioned many pictures of the distant Genpei past. More information: https://ealc.illinois.edu/research/ealc-speaker-series
