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

Tsukioka Kogyo's Fuji Taiko, from the series Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue), is a Meiji woodblock print dated 1893 and held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The print illustrates a moment from the noh play Fujidaiko, also read as Fuji Taiko, in which a woman whose husband has been killed in a contest with a rival musician confronts the great drum he had played and, in her grief, dances at it as if her beating could call him back. The play unfolds through the slow accumulation of memory and the moment of her recognition that no rhythm can return what has been lost. Kogyo's noh-e composition presents the figure of the wife in the patterned costume and mask of the role, holding the still posture of the dance beside the great drum that supplies the play's name. Kogyo had trained under Tsukioka Yoshitoshi in the strict figure drawing of the late ukiyo-e tradition, and the discipline of his teacher's line carries through into his treatment of the play's stillness and grief. The Nogaku Zue series, pursued across the 1890s, drew on direct observation of performances and on cooperation with the great schools then reconstructing the art under Meiji patronage. The carving renders the costume's textile patterns with patient detail, and the printing maintains the muted ground appropriate to performance documentation. The Art Institute of Chicago documents this impression under the title and series given here.