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

The fox — kitsune — occupies a singular place in Japanese visual culture as shape-shifter, trickster, and divine messenger of Inari, and Kyosai engaged this subject throughout his career in painting and print. In the Kyōsai hyakuzu series, a fox composition might depict the animal in its natural form, in the act of transformation, or fully humanized as a woman of the court or a traveling pilgrim. Kyosai's pictorial intelligence was particularly suited to such liminal subjects: his draftsmanship could hold animal and human anatomy in productive ambiguity, allowing the viewer's eye to negotiate between registers. The print medium rewarded this approach — the carved block preserved the calculated ambiguities of his preparatory drawing while the color printing added the warm earthen tones of fox fur or the cool elegance of bijin-ga figure types that the transformed kitsune might embody.