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

The tanuki (raccoon dog) is a beloved figure in Japanese popular visual culture, associated with shape-shifting, good fortune, and comic excess. In the mid-nineteenth century, tanuki imagery was frequently enlisted for social satire, the animal's protean nature making it an apt vehicle for commentary on social performance and pretension. Kyōsai hyakuzu includes tanuki subjects that likely depict the animal in humanized form — drumming on its distended belly, impersonating monks or merchants, or engaged in the kind of theatrical disguise that made the creature a staple of illustrated fiction. This print probably shows a tanuki mid-performance, its round form and distinctive facial markings preserved beneath whatever costume or occupation the composition assigns it. The humor is visual and immediate: the body language and facial expression do the work without requiring text. The woodblock colors are likely warm earth tones — russet, ochre, brown — with ink line defining the characteristic facial mask.