The Oni Submitting to Peach Prince

An illustration to the Momotarō legend, in which the Peach Boy and his three animal companions — a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant — sail to Onigashima and defeat its demon inhabitants. Ozawa Nankoku stages the surrender at the moment after the battle is decided: Momotarō stands in armour at centre, sword drawn and resting at his side, while a procession of horned and clawed oni files towards him to lay down looted treasure. The composition uses a strong central vertical for the boy-hero against a horizontal pile of demons, a structure that economises the available rectangle and lets the white of the unprinted ground define the floor of the demon castle. Ozawa describes the oni with the spiked-hair, fanged-mouth conventions of Edo-period jigokuzu and Meiji oni-paintings, while Momotarō is dressed in plate-and-thread cuirass that points to the slightly archaicising historical-revival current in late-nineteenth-century Japanese illustration. Henry W. Troy's New York engraving uses denser cross-hatching for the demons' bodies than for the boy's, an effect that further isolates Momotarō at the centre of the design.