Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861)

In this iconic and rare print, Miyamoto Musashi (1583-1647), famed as a sword master and inventor of the two-sword style of fencing (nito-ryu), is shown plunging his sword into a giant whale off the coast of Higo (present-day Kumamoto prefecture). The clever composition shows the triptych format at its best; exaggerating the whale's form so that it almost completely fills the entire picture frame, producing an extremely powerful image.

For another impression in the collection of the Royal Scottish Museums, Edinburgh, see Robert Schaap, Heroes and Ghosts: Japanese Prints by Kuniyoshi 1797-1861, (The Netherlands, 1998), p.88, no.69.