Comic view, photographer and standing NIO

This satirical print brings together two visually incongruous presences: a Western-style photographer with his apparatus and a standing Niô, the fierce guardian deity typically positioned at the gates of Buddhist temples. The juxtaposition belongs to a well-established genre of Meiji-era kyôga that found comedy in encounters between foreign technology and Japanese religious tradition. The Niô's exaggerated musculature and open-mouthed grimace — attributes meant to repel evil — are here redirected toward the camera, a device that many contemporary Japanese associated with supernatural extraction of the soul or spirit. Kyosai, who was famously resistant to Western influence while simultaneously curious about it, would have relished the absurdity. The print likely uses asymmetrical composition to heighten contrast between the diminutive, formally dressed photographer and the looming guardian figure, rendered in Kyosai's vigorous ink line with selective color application on the figure's skin and garments.