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

Skeleton imagery — the gaikotsu — was a subject Kyosai returned to with particular intensity, producing compositions that combined anatomical observation (he was known to sketch from actual skeletons) with the theatrical sensibility of popular culture. In the Kyōsai hyakuzu series, a skeleton composition would likely show dancing or animated skeletal figures, drawing on the visual tradition of the danse macabre as filtered through Japanese Buddhist meditation on impermanence. Kyosai's approach emphasized the articulation of individual bones — the metatarsals, the rib cage, the mandible — with a draftsman's precision that gave even his most grotesque subjects a quality of detached observation. In the woodblock medium, the skeleton's pale forms against dark or neutral grounds created strong graphic contrast, with minimal color required to achieve maximum visual effect on the oban sheet.