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

Kou, also read Kogo, is a Meiji woodblock print from 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo, taken from his series Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue). The noh play Kogo recounts the story of Lady Kogo no Tsubone, a court beauty and koto player who, fearing the jealousy of the empress, retreats into seclusion at Saga in the western hills of Kyoto. An envoy of the retired emperor, sent to find her, locates her cottage by the distant sound of her koto on an autumn night. Kogyo, working in his role as the leading noh-e specialist of the Meiji era, distills the play into a quiet image of the masked female shite at her instrument, her brocaded robe and trailing sleeves arranged across the stage with the formal symmetry that defines noh staging. The Art Institute of Chicago, which records this impression, holds Kogyo's noh-e in significant depth, and the Nogaku Zue series in particular is documented there as a major Meiji woodblock project of cultural recording. Kogyo's restraint serves the subject: the koto becomes a visual anchor, the dark robe sets off the pale mask, and the open ground around the figure suggests the moonlit moor without literal landscape. For collectors interested in noh-e or in how the Meiji woodblock industry adapted to documentary projects after the closure of the kabuki-dominated [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) market, Kou is a particularly refined example of Kogyo's mature manner.