Hachi-maki, from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"

Hachi-maki, issued in 1893 within Tsukioka Kogyo's 'Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue),' captures a moment from a noh play whose title refers to the headband worn by the central figure. Tsukioka Kogyo (1869-1927) made this play one of many he chose to record in his comprehensive Nogaku Zue series, a sustained Meiji woodblock project that aimed to document the noh stage in print. The design isolates the figure against an open ground in the bare-stage convention Kogyo refined across the series, with the headband itself functioning as the key visual identifier of the play. The artist had trained under Ogata Gekko and his stepfather Tsukioka Yoshitoshi before specializing in theatrical subjects, and his attention to costume detail allowed him to make small distinctions like the headband legible to viewers familiar with the repertory. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this impression. Kogyo collaborated with the publisher Matsuki Heikichi on this and other sheets in the series, producing prints whose registration and ink quality were unusually fine for the period. For collectors, the appeal of Hachi-maki lies in its compact visual identification of the play through a single costume element, a discipline that runs throughout Kogyo's noh-e and demonstrates how the artist used minimal cues to anchor each scene firmly within its dramatic context.