Matsu-mushi, from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"

Tsukioka Kogyo's Matsu-mushi, 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 the noh play Matsumushi, named for the pine cricket whose late-summer song stands at the heart of the drama. A travelling priest meets the ghost of a man who died at the field of Abe no, having waited for a friend who never came, and whose attachment to the cricket's voice keeps him bound to the world. Kogyo's noh-e composition presents the principal performer in the costume and mask of the ghost, positioned in the stillness that the noh dance requires, against the painted pine and bare planks of the noh stage. Kogyo had been trained under Tsukioka Yoshitoshi in the strict figure drawing of the late ukiyo-e tradition before he turned his career to noh subjects, and his line work here shows that discipline applied to a quieter, more meditative dramatic moment. The Nogaku Zue series, issued across the 1890s under conditions of close cooperation with the leading noh families, formed one of the period's most thorough records of the repertoire. The carving translates the textile patterns of the costume into precise blocks of pigment, and the printing keeps the muted ground appropriate to the recovered art. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues this impression.