I have always been curious about the raptor depicted in the two images below. I finally got around to figuring out what it is, (not terribly difficult in the age of the internet), I picked up some Japanese field guides when I was in Japan, which gave me the latin name. The species name is Spizaetus nipalensis, in Japanese it is called a Kumataka and in English it is known as a Mountain Hawk-eagle, a weirdly awkward, but kind of cool name.
Fukagawa Susaki Jumantsubo (5/1857) from the 100 Views of Edo series by HiroshigeKumataka catching a monkey, illustration from Nigiri Kobushi (The Clenched Fist) a Japanese manual for falconry published in 1750, I found the image in Japanese Book Illustration by Yu-Ying Brown, 1988
This is the best illustration based field Guide that I found in Japan, it appears to be their closest approximation to the Sibley Guides here. The Kumataka is in the upper right. I like the cover.
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