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

Tatsuta is a Meiji woodblock print of 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo from Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue). The Tatsuta play takes its name from the Tatsuta River, the famous Yamato site celebrated in classical poetry for its autumn maple leaves drifting on the water. The shite is the goddess of Tatsuta who, appearing to a traveling priest, reveals herself amid the autumnal landscape and dances a celebration of the season's brilliance. Kogyo, the leading specialist in noh-e during the Meiji era, presents the masked deity in the formal court-style costume associated with the role, with the brocaded robes spread on the open stage in the precise arrangement used in performance. The Art Institute of Chicago, source of this impression, holds Kogyo's Nogaku Zue series among its central Meiji woodblock holdings and treats Tatsuta as one of the more pictorially striking sheets in the project. Throughout the series Kogyo refuses to convert the noh stage into a literal landscape, but in plays like Tatsuta he allows the costume itself, with its maple-leaf motifs and rich autumn coloring, to carry the seasonal charge. The result is a sheet that satisfies both as a record of staged practice and as an autonomous composition in the Meiji woodblock idiom. For collectors of noh-e drawn to the seasonal poetry of the repertoire, Tatsuta is among the most rewarding prints in Kogyo's output.