Kabuki drama Musume Dōjōji — role of the demon of Kiyohime

This 1952 color woodblock ōban, recorded in the Japanese Art Open Database, depicts an actor in the role of the demon of Kiyohime in the kabuki drama Musume Dōjōji ("The Maiden of Dōjōji"). The play, one of the most celebrated of the kabuki dance-drama repertoire, derives from the legend of the temple bell at Dōjōji and the woman who, transformed by jealousy into a vengeful serpent demon, climbs the bell to consume her former lover. Ueno Tadamasa's design shows the demon at the climactic moment of the play, seated atop the enormous temple bell with the snake's tongue extended and the long black wig of the aragoto transformation falling over the actor's shoulders. The print belongs to Tadamasa's celebrated series of kabuki actor prints produced between 1951 and 1953 for the Tokyo publisher Shōkokusha, which revived the classical Torii-school conventions of [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) for a postwar audience of kabuki connoisseurs. The composition isolates the actor and bell against a flat ground, treating costume, makeup, and bell ornament as a graphic ensemble. As a record of mid-century kabuki staging, the print is an important primary source for the visual history of the Musume Dōjōji role in the immediate post-war period.