Tengu of Mount Kurama (1787) – Kitao Shigemasa

A high definition print reproduction of "Tengu of Mount Kurama", a Japanese woodblock print by Kitao Shigemasa (1787)

✓ Thick, matte, museum-quality paper
✓ Printing from ultra-high-definition images
✓ Fast worldwide shipping in a protective cardboard tube
✓ Restored colors faithful to the original work

A young warrior leaps through the air, sword drawn, his pink kimono scattered with maple leaves. Below him, two tengu, the winged goblins of Japan's mountain forests, look up in surprise: a great red tengu with a long nose, and a crow tengu with a green beak and wide feathered wings. A waterfall roars behind them, under a pale moon.

The scene almost certainly shows Ushiwakamaru, the boy who would become the legendary hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune. According to legend, he was raised in a temple on Mount Kurama, near Kyoto, and slipped out at night to train with the tengu, peerless swordsmen who taught him to fight. Here, the pupil is already flying higher than his masters.

The image comes from the Picture Book of the Warriors' Sandals (Ehon musha waraji), published in 1787 by Kitao Shigemasa (1739–1820), one of the great book illustrators of the Edo period and founder of the Kitao school.

About the symbol on the crow tengu's trousers: the 卍 sign is the manji, an ancient Buddhist symbol that has marked temples in Japan for centuries.

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