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

From Kyosai hyakuzu, this woodblock print belongs to a series notable for its thematic eclecticism and technical range. The subject here is likely a karasu-tengu, the crow-beaked mountain goblin that recurs throughout Kyosai's painted and printed oeuvre. Tengu carried deep associations with martial training, mountain asceticism, and supernatural mischief in Japanese iconography, and Kyosai returned to them repeatedly with evident relish. The figure would be positioned dynamically, wings partially unfurled, executed with the compressed energy typical of Kyosai's figure drawing. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation in the sky or background deepens the spatial recession behind the main figure. Within the series the sheet participates in a sustained demonstration of Kyosai's command of both the frightening and the comic, registers he could shift between with facility, and which gave Kyosai hyakuzu its reputation as a compendium of the artist's full pictorial range.