Oda Harunaga and a Page with a Lantern 1865

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi made this woodblock print of Oda Harunaga and a page with a lantern. It’s part of a series called "One Hundred Ghost Stories from China and Japan" which blends folklore with historical narratives. Notice how the beam of light from the lantern illuminates a dark, spectral form in the darkness, which represents the supernatural encounter. The figures are Oda Harunaga, likely inspired by the historical figure Oda Nobunaga, and his page, who are seemingly caught in a moment of awe or fear. Yoshitoshi was active during the Meiji Restoration, a period of huge social and political change in Japan. During the Meiji period, Japan was rapidly modernizing and adopting Western ideas and technologies, so in this context Yoshitoshi's choice to depict ghost stories reflects nostalgia for traditional Japanese culture and a way of negotiating the tensions between the old and new. Historians use a wide range of sources, from literature and folklore to political and economic records, to fully understand how art reflects and shapes its time.