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

Nue depicts one of the most famous monster-slayings in Japanese folklore: the warrior Minamoto no Yorimasa's killing of the chimerical creature known as the nue, which descended nightly on the Imperial Palace to torment the ailing emperor. The nue, in the Tale of the Heike's account, has the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the legs of a tiger, and the tail of a snake. In Noh, the play follows the standard mugen-nō two-act structure: a wandering priest meets a strange boatman, who in the second act reveals himself as the spirit of the slain nue. Tsukioka Kōgyo's print in Nōgaku Hyaku-ban (One Hundred Noh Dramas) captures the shite ghost in his demonic second-act form. Published by Matsuki Heikichi and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, this color woodblock print reflects the documentary care that has made Kōgyo's Meiji-era Noh prints indispensable visual records of plays — like Nue — that are seldom staged today.