Eiko Ozaki’s unforgettable portraits of Japan’s greatest medieval warriors, presented here for the first time in a newly edited text, along with the many stunning woodprints they and their heroic stories inspired.

• Minamoto Monjumaru Yorimitsu and his four loyal retainers, who slew the Giant of Oeyama and confronted the Monster Spider.
  
• Minamoto Sanmi Yorimasa, the archer who vanquished the Monster of the Black Cloud, went on to win the beautiful Lady Ayame, only to lay down his life in the garden of the Byodo-in.
  
• Minamoto Hachiro Tametomo, the wild and reckless youth who joined Emperor Sutoku’s cause, yet was ultimately thwarted and had to flee to the strangely inhabited world of Oshima Island.
  

• Minamoto Uchiwakamaru Yoshitsune, the young warrior raised by his clan’s greatest enemy, the hated Taira Kiyomori, and who fulfilled his mother’s dying wish to revenge his murdered father.

• Musashibo Benkei, the faithful warrior-monk who joined Yoshitsune’s cause after their epic encounter on Gojo bridge, and helped him vanquish the Taira hegemony once and for all at Dan no Ura.