Utagawa Kuniyoshi 歌川国芳

Here Kuniyoshi depicts a woman dressed in a striped robe, holding a child who reaches for the water-squirting toy in her hand. This seemingly domestic scene is juxtaposed with the framed image at upper left, where a heroic figure stands in front of a waterfall. The woman’s striped garment echoes the falls, and the dragons on her sash allude to Matsunaga Daizen, the warrior in the inset, who captured a famous painter’s daughter to steal his sketch of a dragon.