Komurasaki lamenting at the grave of her lover Shirai Gompachi

The print shows the courtesan Komurasaki of the Miuraya kneeling at the grave of her executed lover, the rōnin-turned-bandit Shirai Gompachi, at Meguro's Tōshōji temple. According to the kabuki and storyteller tradition, Komurasaki took her own life at the grave so the two could be buried together as a hiyokuzuka, or paired tomb. The subject is treated in Yoshitoshi's Tsuki hyakushi (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 1885-1892), a series in which every sheet is anchored to a moon and to a literary, historical, or theatrical episode involving moonlight. Yoshitoshi rendered such grave-side scenes with a restrained palette: grey [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) for night, a deep indigo or [sumi](/glossary/sumi) black for the headstone, and a precisely drawn moon, allowing the figure's posture to carry the emotion. Tsuki hyakushi is a series central to scholarly engagement with Yoshitoshi's late work and the source of much of his current reputation.