Priest Ikkyu meets the courtesan Jigokudayû and her attendants

The print depicts the encounter between the Zen master Ikkyū Sōjun (1394–1481) and the courtesan Jigokudayū — "Hell Courtesan" — whose outer robe was embroidered with imagery of Buddhist hells as a meditation on impermanence. Yoshitoshi treats this [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) subject with narrative concentration: the priest, austere and shaven, set against the elaborate textile patterning of Jigokudayū's kimono, with attendants framing the encounter. The contrast required full [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) printing to articulate the embroidered hells — flames, demons, skulls — woven across the courtesan's robe, while Ikkyū's monastic kesa is rendered in flatter tones that emphasise his severity. The composition typically employs a flattened, frieze-like arrangement so the textile imagery reads clearly across the picture surface. Yoshitoshi returned to Jigokudayū repeatedly across his career, drawn by the iconographic richness of a figure who joins carnal and spiritual realms in a single body. Within his late didactic and historical print production, the subject offered a vehicle for psychological characterisation — the courtesan's eventual conversion under Ikkyū's instruction made her a model of awakening, suited to Meiji moral pedagogy without sacrificing visual incident.