Index Page, prints .101-.150 (Vol.2), from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"

This Index Page for prints 101 to 150 (Volume 2) is a Meiji woodblock print by Tsukioka Kogyo, issued in 1893 within Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue). Like other multi-volume Meiji print sets, Pictures of No Performances was organized into bound or boxed volumes, and Kogyo's publisher Matsuki Heikichi included a printed index page at the start of each volume to list the plays included. This sheet catalogues the second volume, with entries naming each noh and kyogen subject between prints 101 and 150 and giving collectors a navigational guide to the series. As a paratextual element it is no less carefully produced than the picture sheets: the keyblock holds the title cartouche, the artist's signature, and the listing of plays in disciplined calligraphic style, with restrained color washes that echo the cool palette of the series. The presence of the index also speaks to the broader ambition of Kogyo's noh-e project, which under his direction grew into the most comprehensive printed survey of the noh repertoire produced in late nineteenth-century Japan. Kogyo, a pupil of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Ogata Gekko, attended actual performances during the Meiji noh revival at the Hosho and Kanze schools, which lent his series documentary authority. The Art Institute of Chicago retains this index sheet within its substantial Kogyo collection, where it preserves the original organizing logic of Pictures of No Performances and contextualizes the individual designs as components of a unified Meiji woodblock publication. Source: Art Institute of Chicago (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/155326).