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

Tsukioka Kogyo's Hakama No, 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 title refers to the noh practice of performance in formal hakama trousers without full costume, used for rehearsal, instruction, and the more restrained appearances at private gatherings. Kogyo's documentation of hakama no within the Nogaku Zue series reflects the documentary ambition of the project, which set out to record not only the visible spectacle of full performance but the broader practice of the noh schools as they reconstituted themselves under Meiji patronage. The figure stands or kneels in the formal hakama, the upper garment falling in the patterned silk of the school's livery, holding the disciplined posture of the trained performer. Kogyo had trained under Tsukioka Yoshitoshi in the strict figure drawing of the late ukiyo-e tradition, and that discipline allows the simpler costume of the hakama no to support the same precision of line and proportion that animates his more elaborately staged compositions. The carving renders the textile patterns with patient detail, and the printing maintains the muted ground appropriate to the documentation of practice rather than to the colour of theatrical promotion. The Art Institute of Chicago's catalogue records this impression and its place within the Nogaku Zue series.