Daibutsu-kuyo, from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"

Daibutsu-kuyo is a Meiji woodblock print from 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo in his series Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue). The play takes its setting from the great consecration ceremony for the rebuilt Todaiji Great Buddha in Nara, after the temple was burned during the Genpei War. Among the ceremonial crowd, the shite appears as an aged woman who is in fact the ghost of Lady Tokiwa or, in some traditions, a vengeful figure connected to the Heike, mingling with worshippers before revealing her true identity. Kogyo, the leading noh-e specialist of the Meiji era, treats the ceremonial setting with characteristic restraint, allowing the masked figure, the costume, and a few selected props to evoke the temple precinct rather than illustrating it literally. As recorded by the Art Institute of Chicago, this Meiji woodblock impression is held within the museum's substantial Kogyo collection. The sheet is typical of Nogaku Zue in its dual project of art and documentation: serious students of noh use the series even today as a visual reference for costume and staging, while collectors prize it as a coherent body of noh-e by a single hand. For viewers approaching the play through the image rather than the stage, Kogyo's restrained palette and careful patterning communicate the play's blend of religious solemnity and uneasy supernatural presence without resorting to spectacle.