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

Tsukioka Kogyo issued "Makiginu" in 1893 as part of his series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)," a sustained project in which the artist set out to render the major plays of the noh repertoire in woodblock form. The play "Makiginu" centers on a court official sent to deliver bolts of silk to a shrine and the divine possession of a shrine maiden that follows, themes Kogyo distills into a quiet, frontal image of the shite figure on the bare noh stage. The mask, the layered robes embroidered with auspicious motifs, and the precisely angled fan are all set down with the documentary care that distinguishes Kogyo's noh-e from earlier [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) treatments of the theater. As a Meiji woodblock, the print uses muted tones, expanses of unprinted paper for the cypress floor, and confident contour lines characteristic of the artist's mature style. "Nogaku Zue" was published by Daikokuya Matsuki Heikichi and circulated as both a connoisseur's reference and a souvenir of an art form that the Meiji government and elite patrons were actively working to preserve after the disruptions of the early Meiji period. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this sheet within its broader collection of Kogyo's noh prints, where it sits alongside other plays from the kami, shura, and onryo categories. For viewers approaching the noh tradition through prints, "Makiginu" offers a controlled, legible image of the play's central moment, executed in the patient woodblock idiom that Kogyo refined across the hundreds of designs in this series.