is an

anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

wooden sculpture Wood carving is a form of woodworking by means of a cutting tool (knife) in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation ...

from the

13th In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave pl ...

14th centuries As a means of recording the passage of time, the 14th century was a century lasting from 1 January 1301 ( MCCCI), to 31 December 1400 (MCD). It is estimated that the century witnessed the death of more than 45 million lives from political and na ...

presumably depicting Minamoto no Yoritomo, now part of the collection of the Tokyo National Museum. Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147–1199) was the founder and the first '' shōgun'' of the Kamakura Shogunate of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. He ruled from 1192 until 1199.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Minamoto no Yoritomo" in . It is generally agreed that the sculpture might be an image of him, but this attribution is not completely certain. Dated from the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle betwee ...

(1185-1333), it is believed that this sculpture was enshrined in the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū

Shinto shrine A is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more ''kami'', the deities of the Shinto religion. Overview Structurally, a Shinto shrine typically comprises several buildings. The '' honden''Also called (本殿, meani ...

Kamakura is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Kamakura has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 persons per km² over the total area of . Kamakura was designated as a city on 3 November 1939. Kamak ...

, a place of worship strongly linked to the Minamoto family. It is also said that when Toyotomi Hideyoshi visited the shrine, he talked to the sculpture of Yoritomo while patting it on its shoulder. Two other very similar sculptures are preserved in Kamakura, an image of

Hōjō Tokiyori Hōjō Tokiyori (, June 29, 1227 – December 24, 1263) was the fifth shikken (regent) of the Kamakura shogunate in Japan. Early life He was born to warrior monk Hōjō Tokiuji and a daughter of Adachi Kagemori. Rule Tokiyori became shikken f ...

at Kenchō-ji, and an image of

Uesugi Shigefusa Uesugi (sometimes written ''Uyesugi'') is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: People *Uesugi clan, a Japanese samurai clan **Uesugi Akisada, (1454–1510), a samurai of the Uesugi clan **Uesugi Harunori (1751–1822), a Jap ...

at Meigetsu-in. The style of these sculptures probably followed the popular portraits of court nobles in their "starched stiff clothing" and cross-legged position. The portrait of Yoritomo seems to have been created some time after the other two, probably close to a century after Yoritomo's death. A smaller-than-life portrait, with a height of about 70 cm from the bottom to the top of the ''eboshi'', the typical headgear used by court nobles, it has been praised for its "solemnity"English display at the TNM and for "showing the noble dignity of the head of a warrior family". It is designated an Important Cultural Property. It is now part of the collection of the Tokyo National Museum in Tokyo, where it is kept and exhibited occasionally. The last time it was on display was from July 25 to October 22, 2017, in Room 11 of the Honkan (Japanese Gallery).

References

External links

{{Commons category, Seated Portrait of Minamoto no Yoritomo (Tokyo National Museum)
Website of the sculpture (Tokyo National Museum) Website of the sculpture (National Institutes for Cultural Heritage)
Wooden sculptures in Japan Important Cultural Properties of Japan Sculptures in the Tokyo National Museum