Emperor and Empress at a Noh Play

Emperor and Empress at a Noh Play (能楽天覧図) is a large mural painting by Konoshima Ōkoku dated 1934, contributed to the cycle of historical paintings at the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery (Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan) in Tokyo. The Memorial Gallery, opened in 1926 in the grounds of the Meiji Shrine outer garden, commissioned a sequence of large-format paintings from leading nihonga and yōga artists of the day to commemorate the Meiji Emperor's reign through scenes from his life and from the major events of his era. Each painter contributed one or more works on a specified historical subject. Ōkoku's contribution depicts the Emperor and Empress attending a Noh performance, a scene drawn from the cultural life of the imperial court in the Meiji period and a subject well suited to his combination of figure drawing, historical reconstruction, and atmospheric composition. The mural is executed in the formal historical-painting manner expected of the project, with careful attention to costume, architectural setting, and the ritual conventions of Noh theater. As one of his late official commissions, it stands at the end of the trajectory that had taken him from Bunten gold medals in the 1910s to the imperial commission system of the 1930s.