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

Mochizuki is a Meiji woodblock print by Tsukioka Kogyo from his series One Hundred No Dramas (Nogaku hyakuban), dated 1893 in the records of the Art Institute of Chicago. The play Mochizuki centers on a revenge plot disguised as a night of music and hospitality, and the noh repertoire treats it with characteristic restraint, building tension through stillness and ritualized gesture. Kogyo's print follows that logic: the central figure is presented in formal stage costume, the robe and mask rendered with precise line and disciplined color, and the surrounding space pared back so the actor's stance carries the play's mood. Pupil of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Ogata Gekko, Kogyo developed a noh-e style that combined ukiyo-e draftsmanship with the formal vocabulary of the noh stage, and Mochizuki demonstrates that combination clearly. The Nogaku hyakuban series, conceived alongside Nogaku Zue, gave Kogyo the scope to treat the noh repertoire as a coherent visual archive rather than a set of isolated subjects, and the prints in the series share a consistent compositional logic and quality of finish. The Art Institute of Chicago documents the impression at https://www.artic.edu/artworks/154650, placing it within a major museum holding of Kogyo's noh prints. For collectors interested in how Meiji woodblock artists engaged seriously with classical Japanese theater, Mochizuki is a strong example of Tsukioka Kogyo's mature work, both as a record of a specific play and as a self-contained Meiji woodblock print.