Momijidari

Momiji-gari ("Maple Viewing") is the title of a Noh play, later adapted for Kabuki, in which the warrior Taira no Koremochi encounters a beautiful noblewoman during an autumn outing in the mountains of Togakushi — only for her to reveal herself as a demon. Binnie's painted treatment engages with a subject richly developed in Japanese theatrical art, where the contrast between the elegance of the maple-viewing party and the latent menace of supernatural transformation invites dramatic compositional handling. As a work in paint rather than woodblock, the piece allows Binnie freedoms of brush, layering and chromatic blending unavailable in the more constrained mokuhanga process. The subject locates Binnie within a lineage of artists — from Yoshitoshi to Kogyo — who treated Noh drama as a vehicle for atmospheric and psychological figure work.