The whole picture is a roof. Its dark gray tiles climb steeply across three sheets of paper, and swarms of men in scale-patterned jackets claw their way up it with hooked poles. At the ridge a hero in a red robe stands his ground, and at the right a red gable end blazes against the blue sky. A great carved fish ornament curls up at the far end of the ridge. Flocks of birds scatter across the top left.
This is Utagawa Kuniyoshi's print of the fight on the roof of the Hōryūkaku, a scene from the Hakkenden, or Tale of Eight Dogs, a huge adventure novel by Kyokutei Bakin that appeared in installments from 1814 to 1842. It follows eight warriors who are born with a crystal bead each, inscribed with a virtue, and who each have the character for dog in their surname. In this episode the hero Inuzuka Shino, with the help of another of the eight, fights off the pursuers who have chased him onto the pavilion roof.
Museums generally date the triptych to about 1836-40. Kuniyoshi was celebrated for exactly this: dynamic warrior scenes and crowded, theatrical compositions where every figure has something to do. A roof is a good subject for him, because gravity does half the composing.
The Hōryūkaku appears on our: