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

Tsukioka Kogyo's Makigaki, 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 print belongs to Kogyo's Nogaku Zue project, which set out across the 1890s to record the noh repertoire and its practices with a thoroughness no earlier theatrical illustration had attempted. Makigaki, a term that names a particular form of brushwood or wattled fence familiar from noh stage settings, indicates a scene in which the property and the figure together evoke the mountain or country setting of a play. Kogyo's noh-e composition observes the conventions of the noh stage and presents the figure in patterned costume and mask, posed beside the makigaki against the bare planks and painted pine. As Yoshitoshi's pupil, Kogyo had absorbed the strict figure drawing of the late [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) tradition, and the discipline of his teacher's line is visible in the careful contour and proportion of the composition. The Nogaku Zue series drew on direct observation of performances and on cooperation with the great schools then reconstructing the art under Meiji patronage. The carving renders the textile patterns and the woven property with patient detail, and the printing maintains the muted ground appropriate to performance documentation. Documentation for this impression is available through the Art Institute of Chicago's online catalogue, which records the artist, series, and date.