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

Karukaya is a Meiji woodblock print of 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo from Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue). The play takes its name from Karukaya Doshin, originally a warrior who abandoned the world after a moment of profound disillusionment and became a monk on Mount Koya. His son Ishidomaru, who searches the country for him, eventually arrives at his father's hermitage; Karukaya, however, refuses to acknowledge the boy in order to protect his vow of renunciation. Kogyo, the leading interpreter of noh-e in the Meiji era, focuses on the masked monk in his robes, the fan held in the formal position, the bearing of the body restrained in the manner of a senior priest. The Art Institute of Chicago, where this Meiji woodblock impression is held, identifies Nogaku Zue as a major Kogyo project and houses an extensive group of sheets from it. The print's spare composition is faithful to the temper of the play: Karukaya's emotional life is hidden behind the mask and behind the monastic discipline, and Kogyo refuses to externalize it. The viewer is left, as in the noh house itself, to read the figure for what it withholds. For collectors of noh-e, this sheet is a useful pairing with other Kogyo prints featuring renunciants, showing the consistency of his approach across plays whose religious tone might otherwise blur into one another.