Heroine Matsukaze

Matsukaze is the central figure of the Noh play attributed to Kan'ami and Zeami, in which the ghosts of two salt-gathering sisters at Suma Bay—Matsukaze ('Pining Wind') and Murasame ('Autumn Rain')—remember their love for the exiled Heian courtier Ariwara no Yukihira. The play has been a fixture of the theatrical repertory and a recurring subject in painting and prints. As a figure print, this work belongs to a different lineage than Nakazawa's landscapes, drawing on the bijin-ga tradition while filtering it through the artist's Western-trained handling of the human form. His training under Kuroda Seiki at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts gave him academic competence in anatomy and modeling, and his depictions of women carry a tonal solidity uncommon in earlier ukiyo-e bijin-ga. Matsukaze's iconography typically includes a salt pail and yoke, the courtier's hunting cloak draped over a pine branch, or the shore at Suma. The print likely incorporates one or more of these motifs alongside the figure herself.