「応需暁斎楽画」 「第九号」「地獄太夫かいこつの遊戯をゆめに見る図」

The ninth Rakuga print depicts Jigoku Dayu — the Hell Courtesan — dreaming of skeletons at play, a subject that merges two of Kyosai's most characteristic preoccupations: the famous historical courtesan who wore robes decorated with Buddhist hell imagery, and his celebrated series of skeleton paintings. Jigoku Dayu, a real fifteenth-century courtesan associated with the Zen monk Ikkyū, became in Japanese artistic tradition an emblem of the intersection of beauty and mortality. Kyosai's skeleton imagery — influenced by his study of anatomical specimens and his familiarity with Hokusai's skull compositions — here appears in a dream sequence, allowing the skeletons to engage in playful, absurdist activity. The compositional structure likely separates the sleeping figure of Jigoku Dayu from a visionary scene rendered in a looser, more animated style, a device Kyosai employed frequently to distinguish waking reality from supernatural apparition. This is among the more thematically rich numbers in the series.