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

Sansho is a Meiji woodblock print of 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo from Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue). The sheet adds to Kogyo's expansive noh-e project by treating a play from the wider noh repertoire with the artist's characteristic combination of documentary attentiveness and pictorial restraint. The Art Institute of Chicago, where this impression is held, regards Nogaku Zue as a central Meiji woodblock survey of noh subjects and treats Kogyo as the period's leading interpreter of noh-e. Throughout the series Kogyo's method is consistent: he observes the play in actual performance, identifies the masked figure and stance that distill its dramatic core, and renders that figure on the open ground of the noh stage. The masked face, the brocaded robe, and any necessary prop are placed in the position the senior performer would assume; pattern, color, and registration are managed with the discipline characteristic of the Meiji woodblock medium at its peak. Sansho sits among the quieter sheets in the series, where the cumulative force of Kogyo's approach becomes most apparent. For collectors of noh-e, these less famous prints carry the same weight as the celebrated ghost and warrior plays because they demonstrate Kogyo's refusal to vary his discipline across the more than two hundred sheets that make up the series as a whole.