Rokujizo (Kyogen), from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"

Rokujizo, a kyogen interlude in Tsukioka Kogyo's 1893 Meiji woodblock series Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue), departs from the contemplative tone of most noh-e in the series in favor of the comic register of kyogen. The Rokujizo play follows a country bumpkin who, charged by his lord with commissioning six statues of the bodhisattva Jizo, is duped by a cunning trickster in the capital who pretends to be six different sculptors. Kogyo, recognized in the Meiji art world as the foremost specialist in noh-e, here turns the same documentary care he applies to the noh repertoire onto its lighter companion form. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this impression, includes Nogaku Zue among its essential Meiji print holdings and identifies sheets like Rokujizo as evidence that Kogyo treated kyogen as a serious subject within the broader project of recording noh-related performance. The costumes are simpler than in the noh proper, with distinctive kyogen robes and headgear, but Kogyo gives the figures the same careful patterning and registration that he affords masked shite. The result is one of the more accessible sheets in the series for viewers who find sustained noh-e demanding, and a useful demonstration of Kogyo's range across the entire program of a noh performance, where kyogen interludes alternate with the formal plays.