Mekari, from the series "One Hundred No Dramas (Nogaku hyakuban)"

Mekari is a Meiji woodblock print of 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo from his noh-e series One Hundred No Dramas (Nogaku hyakuban). The play is set on the rocky strait at Wakamatsu in Buzen, where on the first day of the new year shrine attendants gather wakame seaweed at the lowest ebb of the tide as a ceremonial offering. The first-act shite is a wakame cutter who, in the second half of the play, reveals himself as the god of the strait, dancing a vigorous celebration of the changing tide. Kogyo, the foremost interpreter of noh-e in the Meiji woodblock era, holds the figure in the precise stance of the cutter or the deity, attentive to the patterned robe, the cutting tool, and the position of the headgear. The Art Institute of Chicago, where this impression resides, preserves Nogaku hyakuban among its central Meiji print holdings and identifies Kogyo as the defining noh-e artist of the period. Unlike the introspective ghost dramas elsewhere in the series, Mekari has the brisk energy of a god play, and Kogyo's composition reflects that, with clear color contrasts and an emphatic stance that conveys movement without abandoning the picture's stillness. For collectors of Meiji theatre prints, Mekari is a strong example of how Kogyo's noh-e successfully translate the wide tonal range of the noh repertoire into a unified series.