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Description
The arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry in June 1853 with his gunships and the negotiation of a commercial treaty with the west sharply divided Japanese society. Proponents of "Expelling the Barbarians," led by the daimyo of Mito, Tokugawa Nariaki, rallied around the imperial court at Kyoto. Pitted against them were members of the Tokugawa shogunate who advocated "Opening the Country," led by Ii Naosuke, daimyo of Hikone. Naosuke signed the Harris Treaty with the United States, granting access to ports for trade to American merchants and seamen and extraterritoriality to American citizens. He was assassinated by a group of Mito and Satsuma samurai on the 24th of March 1860. Yoshitoshi's triptych depicts the 18 samurai in the plot gathering in an outdoor pavilion to plan the assassination. One wears a straw coat and another carries an umbrella against the falling snow, while a third warms his hands at a small fire. A pine tree in the background leans under its burden of snow, and three flying birds overlook the gathering.
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