Wu Gang, a Chinese hero

The print depicts the Chinese figure Wu Gang (Japanese: Go Gō), who according to Tang-era legend was sentenced by the immortals to chop perpetually at the great cassia tree growing on the moon — each cut healing as it was made. Yoshitoshi's image typically shows the lone figure mid-stroke, axe raised, against the disc of the moon and the tree's stylized branches. The print is drawn from One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (Tsuki hyakushi, 1885–1892), and its composition demonstrates Yoshitoshi's use of the moon as a structural anchor, the figure aligned with or set against the lunar disc rather than a terrestrial setting. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) grades the surrounding sky from deep night blue to a paler corona around the moon. Tsuki hyakushi treats Chinese subjects alongside Japanese ones, and the Wu Gang print extends the loyalty-and-endurance themes that recur across the series into the realm of cosmological myth, where punishment becomes an image of inexhaustible labor.