This screen panel depicts the penultimate battle during the Genpei Wars (1180–85), when Minamoto no Yoshitsune is saved by one of his retainers, Sato Tsugunobu, who had inserted himself between an enemy arrow and his master. The valiant retainer is shown plummeting off his horse at the center of the screen. One of the central themes of the painting is the samurai code—especially the relationship between the lord and retainer—demonstrating the concerns and ideals of the military class at a time when betrayal was a real threat. When the screen was painted, however, the peaceful Edo life rendered such relationships irrelevant, weakening the shogunate's control over its vassals. In the centuries before the Edo period, Zen Buddhism and the tea protocol emphasized the bond between teacher and student, rather than the bond between lord and retainer, making both practices popular among the samurai as well as the Buddhists.