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

Tsukioka Kogyo's Kosode Soga, 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 image illustrates a scene from the noh play Kosode Soga, which dramatises the parting of the Soga brothers Juro and Goro from their mother Mannoji before their vendetta against Kudo Suketsune. Their mother offers them a kosode, a short-sleeved silk robe, as a final gift, and the noh stages the meeting with the spare emotional restraint characteristic of the form. Kogyo's noh-e composition presents the figures within the conventional bounds of the noh stage, with attention paid to the placement of the mask, the fall of the costume, and the held position of the dance. As a graduate of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's studio, Kogyo had absorbed the discipline of figure drawing before he committed his career to the noh, and the precision of contour visible here reflects that training. The Nogaku Zue series, produced across the 1890s, drew on close observation of actual performances and on Kogyo's access to the great noh families of the period, when the art was being reconstructed under Meiji patronage after its near-collapse in the early years of the era. The woodblock surface preserves the muted ground and patterned brocade typical of his approach, with the carving rendering the textile motifs with patient detail. Documentation for the Art Institute impression appears in the museum's online catalogue.