This authentic Edo-period Japanese woodblock book is Volume 4 of the First Series of Ehon Ōnin-ki (繪本應仁記), an illustrated historical chronicle depicting the Ōnin War (1467–1477) — the conflict that triggered the collapse of the Ashikaga shogunate and ushered in Japan’s Sengoku era.
Printed using traditional woodblock techniques and written in classical Japanese, this volume continues the narrative with detailed military episodes, political intrigue, and regional power struggles. The book features striking double-page landscape illustrations, showing fortified mountains, temples, and battle settings rendered in expressive Edo-period linework.
Attributed to Takai Ranzan (高井蘭山翁), Ehon Ōnin-ki was widely read during the Edo period as both an educational and entertaining historical work, blending factual history with narrative storytelling in the gunki monogatari (war chronicle) tradition.
Historical Context
Subject: Ōnin War (Muromachi period, 15th century)
Multiple illustrated spreads and dense textual sections
This volume is ideal for collectors of Edo-period books, samurai and military history, Japanese woodblock printing, and pre-modern Japanese historiography.
