Last will and testament of Emperor Go Toba, with handprints
後鳥羽天皇宸翰御手印置文
Artwork · Emperor Go Toba · 1239 · document · Minase Jingū
The testament Go-Toba (1179–1239) composed in exile on the island of Oki a few months before his death, after the failure of his Jōkyū Rebellion against the shogunate in 1221. The calligraphy is among the most refined of a long tradition; the hand and palm prints, long reputed to be of blood, are of red seal ink, as John Carpenter has shown — pressed so hard that they are an almost intact record of the exiled emperor’s hands. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 181–182, fig. 210. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.