Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳) (artist 11/15/1797 – 03/05/1861)
Hōjō Takatoki watching a dog fight (北條高時犬合戦之圖) - attributed to Kuniyoshi - right-hand panel of a diptych
1850s
9.25 in x 13.5 in (Overall dimensions) Japanese woodblock print
No signature
No publisher's seal
No censor or date seal
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - 1868 Yoshifuji print including Hōjō Takatoki
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Shigenobu triptych of group assembled to attack Hōjō Takatoki in Kamakura
Los Angeles County Museum of Art - Yoshitoshi of Hōjō Takatoki tormented by tengu The man seated in the upper right watching the dog fight is Hōjō Takatoki (北條高時: 1303-33) was the last of the Kamakura Shikken or regents. His father, Sadatoki, abdicated, took vows and had his head shaved. His son-in-law Morotoki became regent, but died in 1311. That is when the eight year old Takatoki became the Shikken. He was assisted in this role until 1316 when he became the sole regent, "...but being of weak intelligence and dissolute morals, he spent his time in assisting at dances and dogfights, leaving the government in the hands of his minister Nagasaki Takasuke. The latter by his bad administration excited general discontent, and troubles arose in different provinces (1322). The emperor Go-Daigo thought the time favorable for the overthrow of the powerful Shikken; emissaries sent by him found adherents even in Kamakura. But Takatoki having heard of it, obliged the emperor, under pain of deposition to disown his emissaries and profess his good dispositions towards the Hōjō (1325)." The situation only got worse, but we will deal with that later.
Quoted from: Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan by E. Papinot, p. 167.
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According to Donald Shively noted that " It is hardly surprising that Chikamatsu yielded to the temptation to satirize Tsunayoshi's dog laws in one of his history plays. The Sagami Lay Monk and the Thousand Dogs is ostensibly about Hōjō Takatoki 北条高時 (1303-1333), a military dictator nearly four centuries earlier, who occupied a position roughly analogous to that of Tsunayoshi as military overlord of all Japan. ...
The Tokugawa shogun and the Hōjō regent, separated by centuries, had in common a mania for dogs. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi saved them, whereas Hōjō Takatoki had collected fighting dogs, which he had slaughter each other in mammoth dogfights. Undeterred by this incongruity, Chikamatsu projected material from Tsunayoshi's measures into Takatoki's and fused the two unpopular rulers into a single character, achieving a high con centration of reprehensible characteristics....
The play opens with a denunciation of unvirtuous rulers, brands Takatoki as a usurper and an immoral dictator, and plunges at once into his passion for dogfight....
The opening lines of the drama, composed of phrases lifted from several different passages in the classic Mencius, constitute a Confucian denunciation of a bad ruler. It is evident from the start that Chikamatsu has the serious intention of denouncing a ruler, identified by the title of the play as the Sagami lay monk, Takatoki. The play begins:
Mencius said to King Hui of Liang: "In your kitchen there is fat meat, but on the wilds there are those who have died of famine. This is a ruler leading on beasts to devour men.Why should the people take sides with him? If, being sparing in the use of punishments and fines, and making the taxes and levies light, you will dispense a benevolent government; the people will progress and will be able to defeat strong mail and sharp weapons."Chikamatsu's references to Takatoki are based on the Taiheiki (太平記), "...a popular military epic of the late 14th century." In the second act Chikamatsu describes what he imagines Takatoki's preparations would have been for the dog fights: ". . .quickly they adorn [the dogs] with large tassels, small tassels, five-colored tassels and leashes of gold, silver, pearls and jewels . . . several thousand dogs . . . The time is the third day of the third month of the third year of Genko (1333). The fighting dogs in two camps are held in check. The coteries of greater and lesser lords, of direct retainers and outside lords, are seated lined up on the broad veranda or sit at ease along the edge of the court to watch. When the time comes many dogs adorned with damask and brocade are led forth from the two camps. At the same moment their leashes are cut loose, they are driven into the enclosure, and passing each other and intermingling, they bite and are bitten, and their howls are such as would startle Brahma, [cause] the river gods to leap out of their abodes, and shatter the center of the earth.17 The handlers to the left and right wave and wave their gold and silver flags, strike the enclosure, and time after time drive them back in to join the fight. Some have their vitals chewed away, and many die on the spot. Others have their tails eaten off or their legs injured and flee. Blood flows and gushes about, the corpses pile up in heaps. When the fan of victory is raised, the handlers enter the enclosure and, separating the dogs, lead them back to their sides. [This spectacle is] conduct unheard of in earlier ages. The lay monk Takatoki, carried away by this pleasure, tips down several cups."
When Hōjō Takatoki stepped down in 1326 from being shogun he became a Buddhist lay monk, taking the name Sōkan (宗鑑).
Quotes and information from: 'Chikamatsu's Satire on The Dog Shogun' by Donald H. Shively, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Jun., 1955, Vol. 18, No. 1/2.
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Kawatake Mokuami (1816-1893) wrote a kabuki play for Danjūrō IX (1838-1903) entitled Takatoki. In this 1884 play Takatoki "...is punished for his hubris by a flock of Fury-like tengu goblins who bewitch him into a whirling dance from which he is powerless to escape."
Quoted from: "Takatoki: A Kabuki Drama" by Kawatake Mokuami, translated by Faith Bach, Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Autumn, 1998), p. 158.
"Takatoki's legendary love of dogs inspires the story of the play's first act, wherein the regent orders the execution of a samurai for having killed Takatoki's pet dog. Takatoki is punished for his hubris by flock of tengu goblins, who bewitch him into a maddening dance and issue omens of the fall of his house." (Ibid., p. 159)
Takatoki's dog is called 'Dragoncloud' (Unryū). (Ibid., p. 161)
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One reason this diptych has no signature, seal, publisher or government stamp of approval may be because it was published as a criticism of the current regime in Edo in the late 1840s or in the 1850s. To do otherwise would have risked arrest and fining of the artist and the publisher himself with the chance that he might be put out of business altogether.
The term inu-gassen (犬合戦) in the title means dog-fight.
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The whole diptych is illustrated in color in A Special Exhibition of Japanese Woodblock Prints: Ukiyo-e from Tadashi Goino's Collections (日本浮世繪兿術特展: 五井野正先生収藏展), National Museum of History [Taipei], 1999, 101.
Historical - Social - Ephemera (genre)
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (近松門左衛門) (author)