The painting here captures a single scene from the “Battle at Rokuhara” in the Illustrated Tale of the Heiji Civil War (Heiji monogatari emaki). The image depicts Heike warriors chasing the Genji, who lost their attack on the Rokuhara mansion, down the riverbed at Sanjo in Kyoto. Figuring prominently at the center is the Heike leader Taira no Kiyomori. Today, only three handscrolls from the Illustrated Tale of the Heiji Civil War remain: “Night Attack on the Sanjo Palace” (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); the “Shinzei Scroll” (Seikado); and “Imperial Visit to Rokuhara” (Tokyo National Museum). According to a 1954 study, the “Battle at Rokuhara” scroll survived in fourteen segments, though presently only  ve segments exist, of which the present hanging scroll is one. The contents of the “Battle at Rokuhara” scroll can be seen in its entirety through an Edo-period Kano-school copy, which now belongs to the Tokyo National Museum.

The textual sections for the three surviving handscrolls were inscribed by the same calligrapher, who, scholars believe, from the distinctive “quiver” of the handwriting, to be Fujiwara no Noriie (1194–1255) in his later years. Though the textual sections for the “Battle at Rokuhara” did not survive, the copy of the Tokyo National Museum scroll has a text section, which di ers in calligraphic style from the three surviving handscrolls. Tamura Etsuko, however, found a portion of the text for the “Battle at Rokuhara” handscroll in the publication Shingajo (Painting Album of the Heart, 1890), and con rmed that it was indeed written by the same calligrapher as the surviving three handscrolls.

Some scholars have noted that stylistic differences in the paintings and have attributed these to different production dates. Tamura, however, found that the painted and textual sections in some parts of two of the surviving handscrolls were done on the same paper and the handwriting of the text sections in both scrolls is the same, indicating that the two scrolls and their respective paintings date to the same period. A leading authority Matsubara Shigeru accounts for the differences in painting styles in a single work as follows: “This likely has to do with the permissible range of variation for each group working on different sections of a single composition.”

Akiyama Terukazu, who studied the fourteen segments of “Battle at Rokuhara,” explains as follows: “All [fourteen segments] have preserved their original colors brilliantly. Aside from removing a small portion of the paint when remounting the segments into square shikishi format and adding paper to the areas along the edges that were insufficient, the retouches are hardly noticeable.” Several differences can be confirmed when compared to the copy. For example, the copy has a banner in the upper right, while this painting does not. The banner here is thought to have been erased or removed. A yellow pole can be faintly seen, confirming that a banner had originally been painted. The copy also shows a horse-riding warrior in the upper left, while this cannot be found in the painting here. Akiyama explains this as follows: “The upper left corner was cut o  in this segment as [the horse rider] was removed, white paper was skillfully supplemented in this section instead.” It is believed that such treatment was due to having changed the composition into a square format.