Ohara-gokô, from the series "One Hundred No Dramas (Nogaku hyakuban)"

Ohara-goko is a Meiji woodblock print of 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo from his series One Hundred No Dramas (Nogaku hyakuban). The play stages the imperial visit, or goko, made by the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa to the convent at Jakko-in in the Ohara hills, where Kenreimon-in, the empress dowager of the Heike, lives in seclusion after the destruction of her clan at Dan-no-ura. The shite is Kenreimon-in herself, who recounts her flight, the deaths of her son and family, and her final renunciation of the world. Kogyo, the leading specialist in noh-e during the Meiji era, situates the masked nun in austere monastic robes, her bearing entirely defined by stillness and the slight tilt of the mask. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this impression, identifies Nogaku hyakuban as a key Kogyo project and preserves a substantial run of sheets from the series. Compared to the more documentary Nogaku Zue, the Hyakuban prints are slightly more atmospheric, and Ohara-goko makes good use of that latitude: the muted ground, the careful disposition of accessories, and the restrained palette together communicate the autumnal melancholy that pervades the play. As a Meiji woodblock interpretation of one of noh's most affecting human dramas, the sheet is a strong representative of why Kogyo's noh-e remain the standard visual reference for the repertoire.