Battle of the Chess Pieces: Great Peace across the Board

In these prints, the designer Utagawa Kuniyoshi seems to critique the difference between a calmly planned battle strategy and the chaos of an actual battlefield. Kuniyoshi depicted a wild battle between warriors fashioned as pieces in shōgi, a board game similar to chess. The inscription in the middle print suggests that this scene is based on the Chronicle of Great Peace, an epic story of civil wars fought in the first half of the 1300s. Kuniyoshi and the publisher, Gusokuya Kahei, avoided referencing specific warriors or battles to pass government censorship, which restricted criticism against military authority.