Adachiga Hara, from the series "One Hundred No Dramas (Nogaku hyakuban)"

Adachiga Hara, also known as Kurozuka, is one of the most chilling plays in the demon (kichiku-mono) category of the Noh repertoire, and Tsukioka Kōgyo's print in the Nōgaku Hyaku-ban (One Hundred Noh Dramas) series renders it with appropriate gravity. The play tells the story of a wandering priest and his attendants who take shelter in the hut of an old woman on the Adachi plain. The woman, who turns out to be a man-eating demon (oni-baba), forbids them to look into a back room; they disobey, find a pile of human corpses, and the demon pursues them in her true form. Kōgyo captures the shite at the moment of her transformation, the hannya mask and disheveled hair contrasted against the white robes that the karazuri (embossed printing) technique would have given subtle texture. Published by Matsuki Heikichi, this color woodblock print from the Art Institute of Chicago dates to the 1898-1903 phase of Kōgyo's Noh documentation and exemplifies the documentary precision of the Nōga Taikan and Nōgaku Hyaku-ban projects.