“One-Legged Umbrella Monster” (Kasa ippon ashi)

This 1857 vertical chuban from the Metropolitan Museum of Art presents one of Konishi Hirosada's rare ventures into yokai (supernatural creature) imagery — the Kasa ippon ashi, a folkloric one-legged umbrella monster that became a beloved figure in late-Edo popular culture. The image likely depicts a kabuki actor playing the umbrella monster in a comic or supernatural role, continuing Hirosada's career-long focus on theater while expanding into the supernatural subject matter that gained increasing popularity in the 1850s. The Kasa ippon ashi belongs to the tsukumogami category of yokai — household objects that gain sentience and supernatural powers after a century of use — and Hirosada's print contributes to the visual record of how kabuki stagecraft brought such folkloric figures into popular performance. The Met's holding from the Charles A. Greenfield bequest is a fine impression in vivid color, demonstrating the technical sophistication of Osaka color printing in its final decade.