Tojaku (or Kakitsuta), from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)"
- Date:
- 1898
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tojaku, also identified as Kakitsuta, is a Meiji woodblock print of 1893 by Tsukioka Kogyo from Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue). The Kakitsuta play, the more familiar reading of the title, takes its name from a tomb so densely wrapped in ivy that travelers can no longer find it. The shite is the ghost of a woman whose suppressed passions are figured as the binding vine, and who appears to a traveling priest to seek release through prayer. Kogyo, the leading specialist in noh-e during the Meiji era, presents the masked spirit in robes whose layered patterning Kogyo treats with the same care he applies to the most famous ghost plays in the series. The Art Institute of Chicago, where this impression is preserved, identifies Nogaku Zue as a major Meiji woodblock project and treats Tojaku among its more poetically charged sheets from the series. The print is consistent with Kogyo's approach across his noh-e: the figure stands on the open ground of the stage; fan and robe are positioned in the precise stance of performance; the supernatural is implied through stillness and mask rather than illustrated. For collectors of Meiji theatre prints drawn to the genre's plays of bound, restless spirits, Tojaku is a strong companion piece to Kogyo's depictions of Teika and other dramas of erotic obsession transformed into vegetative form.
1898/1903
Color woodblock print; left sheet of oban diptych (right: 1943.833.42a)
1898/1903
Color woodblock print
1898
Color woodblock print
1898
Color woodblock print
Tojaku (or Kakitsuta), from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)" was created by Tsukioka Kōgyo (月岡耕漁) in 1898.
Tojaku (or Kakitsuta), from the series "Pictures of No Performances (Nogaku Zue)" depicts theater.
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