Gamo Sadahide's Servant, Toki Motosada, Hurling a Demon King to the Ground at Mount Inahana, from the series "New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts (Shinkei sanjuroku kaisen)"
- Series:
- New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts
From the late series New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts (Shinkei sanjūroku kaisen), this 1890 print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi depicts the warrior Toki Motosada, retainer of the sixteenth-century daimyō Gamō Sadahide, grappling with a demon king on the slopes of Mount Inahana. According to the legend Yoshitoshi illustrates, Motosada climbed the haunted mountain alone at night and confronted the spectral oni that had terrorized travelers, eventually hurling the creature to the ground in a feat of supernatural courage. The artist organizes the scene around a tense diagonal: the demon's clawed body twists downward across the sheet while Motosada stands braced above, his armor and weapons rendered with the meticulous detailing that distinguished Yoshitoshi from many of his contemporaries. The Thirty-Six Ghosts series, designed in the last years of the artist's life, represents one of the great achievements of late Meiji [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), gathering tales of ghosts, demons, and supernatural encounters drawn from Japanese and Chinese sources and treating each with the same psychological seriousness Tsukioka Yoshitoshi brought to his celebrated One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. The print's restrained palette, dominated by midnight blues and the pale flesh tones of the demon, intensifies the eerie atmosphere and showcases the carver's skill in fine-line description of hair and fur. This impression is held by the Art Institute of Chicago, which makes additional documentation available at artic.edu/artworks/196865.
1888
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Color woodblock print
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Gamo Sadahide's Servant, Toki Motosada, Hurling a Demon King to the Ground at Mount Inahana, from the series "New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts (Shinkei sanjuroku kaisen)" was created by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡芳年) in 1890.
Yes — Gamo Sadahide's Servant, Toki Motosada, Hurling a Demon King to the Ground at Mount Inahana, from the series "New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts (Shinkei sanjuroku kaisen)" is part of the New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts series by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.
Gamo Sadahide's Servant, Toki Motosada, Hurling a Demon King to the Ground at Mount Inahana, from the series "New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts (Shinkei sanjuroku kaisen)" depicts mythology.
