from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai (Kyôsai hyakuzu)

This woodblock print from the Kyôsai hyakuzu occupies the twenty-second position in a series that Kyosai conceived as a comprehensive survey of his imaginative range. At this number, the series is well into its first quarter, and the subject likely reflects the variety that distinguishes the Hyakuzu from more thematically unified print suites. The image may present a supernatural figure — a tengu with its characteristic long nose and feathered wings, a tanuki in human disguise, or one of the classical demons from Buddhist hell imagery — treated with Kyosai's characteristic blend of formal competence and tonal irreverence. The woodblock printing of this sheet would have proceeded through key block followed by sequential color blocks, each run through the press with the baren on dampened washi, producing the flat yet vibrant color field typical of nishiki-e at this scale. Within the Meiji-era context, the Hyakuzu reads as an act of cultural consolidation: Kyosai gathering the full inheritance of Japanese pictorial tradition into a single printed monument.