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

Ghost imagery — yūrei, the restless spirits of the wronged dead — appears throughout Kyōsai hyakuzu, drawing on a tradition of supernatural depiction that Kyōsai developed in close dialogue with Utagawa Kuniyoshi's ghost prints and the theatrical conventions of Edo-period kabuki. This sheet likely presents a female yūrei: the elongated white form, disheveled black hair, and absent or trailing lower body that had become codified in Japanese visual culture by the mid-nineteenth century. Kyōsai's ghosts are distinguished by the expressiveness of their faces — grief, rage, and longing rendered with a few swift strokes — and by the integration of the spectral figure into an atmospheric ground. The printer's bokashi technique creates a diffuse, unlocated darkness behind the form, heightening the sense of dislocation. The white of the washi paper itself functions as the ghost's skin, requiring no additional pigment, while ink gradations model the drapery of the burial shroud.