Night Attack on the Sanjô Palace

Night Attack on the Sanjô Palace. Kamakura Period, Japan. c. 1250–1300 C.E. Handscroll (ink and color on paper)

• It is hard to imagine an image of war that matches the visceral and psychological power of the Night Attack on the Sanjô Palace.  
• It also is a prime example of the action‐packed otoko‐e, “men’s paintings,” created in the Kamakura period.
• A handscroll is meant to be held and unrolled section by section horizontally in contrast to a scroll that is intended to be hung and is vertically oriented.
• The Kamakura period lasted from 1185 until 1333. It was initiated by the Shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo and marked the beginning of feudal Japan and the samurai caste. 
• Designed to be unrolled in sections for close‐up viewing, it shows the basic features of this pictorial form: a bird’s eye view of action moves right‐to‐left 
• The attention to detail is so exact that historians consider it a uniquely valuable reference for this period: from the royal mansion’s walled gateways, unpainted wooden buildings linked by corridors, bark roofs, large shutters and bamboo blinds that open to verandas, to the scores of foot soldiers, cavalry, courtiers, priests, imperial police, and even the occasional lady—each individualized by gesture and facial expression from horror to morbid humor, robes, armor, and weaponry easily identifiable according to rank, design, and type. 
• He organized a jumble of minutiae into a cohesive narrative arc.
• Beginning from a point of ominous calm, a single ox carriage transports the eye to a tangle of shoving and colliding carts and warriors. With escalating violence, the energy pulses, swells, and then rushes to a crescendo of graphic hand‐to‐hand mayhem—decapitations, stabbings and hacking
• followed by an explosion of billowing flame and women fleeing for their lives amid the din.
• his vision has enthralled viewers across centuries and cultures, making this painting not only among the very finest picture scrolls ever conceived, but also among the most gripping depictions of warfare
• Sanjô Palace was the home of former Emperor Go‐Shirakawa; The two emperors backed vying sides of the Fujiwara clan, a conspiratorial family unsurpassed in subjugating and sometimes choosing a succession of emperors.
• The Taira and the Minamoto clans served powerful interests in all of these disputes, while also pursuing their own ambitions as bitter rivals of the other.
• the Night Attack was part of Fujiwara no Nobuyori’s bid to seize power by abducting both the emperor and the retired emperor. Backed by Minamoto no Yoshitomo, head of that clan, Nobuyori saw an opportunity when the head of the Taira clan, who supported Emperor Nijō, left Kyōto on a pilgrimage.
• Three key elements appear multiple times, orienting the eye and organizing the sweep of events: guided by a groom inside, the elegant ox carriage that will carry off Go‐Shirakawa opens the action.