Index Page, prints .151-.200 (Vol.2), from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"
- Date:
- 1898
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
This index page from Tsukioka Kogyo's "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)," covering prints 151 through 200 of the second volume and dated 1893, offers an unusual window into how the artist's noh print series was organized and circulated. Rather than illustrating a single play, the sheet lists titles, sequence numbers, and other organizational information that allowed collectors and binders to keep the very long series in order. As a Meiji woodblock object, the index demonstrates the publishing infrastructure that supported large-scale documentary print series at the end of the nineteenth century, with Daikokuya Matsuki Heikichi acting as publisher for "Nogaku Zue." The page is printed in the same careful idiom as the noh-e designs themselves, with clean typographic blocks and modest decorative borders that signal it as part of the same project. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this index alongside the illustrated sheets it catalogues, and its presence in the collection underscores the institutional interest in Kogyo's series as a coherent whole rather than as a loose set of individual prints. For researchers and collectors, index pages like this one are essential for reconstructing the original ordering of plays, identifying lost or scattered sheets, and understanding the conventions by which Meiji-era publishers presented multi-hundred-print series to their audiences. Within the larger story of Tsukioka Kogyo's career, the index reminds us that his contribution to noh-e was as much a publishing achievement as a series of individual images.
1898/1903
Color woodblock print; left sheet of oban diptych (right: 1943.833.42a)
1898/1903
Color woodblock print
1898
Color woodblock print
1898
Color woodblock print
Index Page, prints .151-.200 (Vol.2), from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)" was created by Tsukioka Kōgyo (月岡耕漁) in 1898.
Index Page, prints .151-.200 (Vol.2), from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)" depicts theater.
![Kabukiza [Kabuki Theater] by Sonoyama Harumi](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/10806d46-109a-d67f-30ac-d57e9b374873/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
![Inside Scene of Kabukiza [Kabuki theater] (One Hundred Views of Tokyo, Message to the 21st Century) by Obata Tsutomu](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/33905fb8-c304-71f5-6150-cb9260cf9efa/full/843,/0/default.jpg)