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

Semimaru is a Meiji woodblock print from 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo, part of his series Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue). The play takes its name from Semimaru, the blind prince and musician who has been abandoned at the Osaka barrier on the orders of his father, and centers on his reunion there with his half-mad sister Sakagami, whose hair grows upward in disorder as a sign of her affliction. Kogyo, the leading specialist in noh-e in the Meiji era, presents Semimaru with his biwa and his straw hat, costume and prop drawn directly from contemporary noh practice. The Art Institute of Chicago, source of this impression, holds Kogyo's Nogaku Zue in depth and records Semimaru among its key sheets from the series. The play is one of noh's most concentrated meditations on impermanence and on the disabled body as a site of spiritual insight, and Kogyo's understated treatment refuses to sentimentalize the prince. The shite is placed against a restrained ground; the brocade of the robe and the texture of the biwa surface receive close attention; the masked face is angled in the way the actual performer would tilt it during the central passage of the play. As Meiji woodblock noh-e, Semimaru exemplifies Kogyo's gift for letting a single composed figure carry the weight of a complete dramatic situation.