IMPERIAL TOMBS

The selection of tombs in this scroll, which dates from immediately before the Imperial restoration, interestingly reflects the concerns of the Imperial loyalists, inspired as they were by the Kokugaku [national learning] movement spearheaded by Motoori Norinaga (see lot 21) and others. There is a marked preference for very early, mostly legendary Emperors who ruled Japan prior to its contamination, as the loyalists would have seen it, by Chinese culture and the Buddhist religion. The only later Emperor whose tomb is shown is Go-Daigo (ruled 1318-1339) whose brief reign witnessed a number of unsuccessful attempts to restore Imperial power. The fourteenth-century heroes who assisted Go-Daigo were revered in Meiji Japan, since their struggles mirrored those of the group which toppled the shogun and established the fifteen-year-old Emperor Mutsuhito as constitutional monarch in 1867-8.