Daija, from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"

Daija is a Meiji woodblock print by Tsukioka Kogyo, designed in 1893 for the series Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue) and held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The play Daija, the Great Serpent, belongs to the more dramatic end of the noh repertoire, and Kogyo's image registers that energy while remaining within the disciplined formal vocabulary of noh-e. The central figure occupies the sheet in elaborate stage costume, the serpent identity conveyed through mask and robe rather than through extravagant background imagery, while line and color are calibrated to suggest charged stillness rather than visual chaos. Pupil of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Ogata Gekko, Kogyo combined [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) draftsmanship with the meditative restraint of the noh stage, and Daija demonstrates that he could handle the genre's more theatrical subjects without breaking that balance. The Nogaku Zue series is widely regarded as the foundational Meiji project of noh-e, treating the noh repertoire as a coherent body of subjects worthy of sustained printmaking attention. Each sheet preserves the conventions of mask, robe, and gesture associated with a specific play. The Art Institute of Chicago documents the impression at https://www.artic.edu/artworks/155401, placing it within a major museum holding of Kogyo's noh prints. For collectors, Daija is a memorable example of how Tsukioka Kogyo translated supernatural subjects from the noh stage into focused, durable Meiji woodblock images.