The work known in English as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sankuo chih yen i) is a 14th century Chinese novel based on historical events and personages of the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. Its hero is the famous general Kuan Yu (`Kan U' in the Japanese pronunciation), who was canonized as an Immortal in 1128 and deified as the Chinese God of War in 1594.

The novel was translated into Japanese by the writer Konan Bunzan and later revised by Ikeda Touritei under the title Ehon tsuzoku sangoku-shi, (Illustrated Popular History of the Three Kingdoms), and was published in 74 installments, the last of which came out in 1836. The illustrations were by one of Hokusai's best pupils, Taito II. This translation was an immediate best-seller, and it inspired the artist Kuniyoshi to issue what would prove to be the first of many sets of woodblock prints depicting various scenes and characters from the novel. These prints in turn were also very successful and helped to establish Kuniyoshi's reputation as the premier designer of heroic subjects through the last decades of the Edo period.

The first illustration (Print 3-1) shows one of a set of impressive triptychs by Kuniyoshi that he published in 1853-54. It depicts a striking and memorable passage in Chapter 75 of Book XII of the Chinese novel. Kuan Yu's arm has been injured in battle, and he insists on having it attended to without fuss:

The surgeon, accordingly, pressed down with his knife and made an incision in the flesh as far as the bone, exposing the infected part. With his knife he scraped away at the bone, making a grating noise as he did so. Everyone who was watching, soldiers as well as civilians, averted their faces and turned pale. Kuan Yu drank wine, ate some meat, cracked jokes, and played go, showing not the slightest sign of pain as the basin filled with blood. The surgeon scraped away the last of the infection, then applied medicine and bound up the wound with a silken cord.

Kuan Yu gave a hearty laugh and got to his feet. He turned to his lieutenants and said, `Now I can stretch my arm as before, without trouble. Truly, this is an eminent doctor!'