Saigyo-zakura, from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"

Saigyō-zakura, produced by Tsukioka Kōgyo in 1893 for Pictures of No Performances (Nōgaku Zue), depicts a Noh play that grew out of the legend of the wandering monk-poet Saigyō and the spirit of an old cherry tree. The aged tree, vexed at the visitors who disturb its solitude under the guise of admiring its blossoms, appears to Saigyō in human form and engages him in a dialogue on the relation between blossoms, poetry, and the cycles of the world. Kōgyo's print isolates the spectral cherry-tree figure against the open ground of the Noh stage, the costume layered to suggest age and rooted dignity, the mask catching just enough light to register the play's pivot between human and arboreal. As a defining figure of Meiji [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) devoted to Noh prints, Kōgyo treated such poetic, allusive plays with particular sensitivity, his quiet handling of color and his unbroken line keeping the image close to the temperament of the live performance. Training under Tsukioka Yoshitoshi gave him narrative clarity, and his studies with Ogata Gekkō refined his tonal control; both qualities serve a play that asks the viewer to weigh the personality of a tree. Saigyō-zakura would re-emerge in Kōgyo's encyclopedic Nōga Taikan, but the Nōgaku Zue version is where he first set his vision of the play in polychrome woodblock. The Art Institute of Chicago retains this impression among its late nineteenth-century Japanese prints.