Ghosts Appearing at Daimotsu-no-ura

Ghosts Appearing at Daimotsu-no-ura by Yoshitoshi Mori depicts one of the most haunting episodes in the cycle of Genpei War legends, the moment off the coast of Daimotsu Bay when the vengeful spirits of the defeated Taira clan rise from the waves to threaten Minamoto no Yoshitsune as he flees his brother's pursuit. The scene was made famous by the noh play Funa-Benkei, in which Yoshitsune's loyal warrior-monk Benkei subdues the ghosts with prayer, and it became a staple of kabuki and ukiyo-e iconography. For Mori (1898-1992), one of the foremost practitioners of kappazuri stencil prints in the sosaku-hanga (creative print) movement, the subject was a natural fit. His mature style favored bold black silhouettes, flat ornamental color fields, and a graphic compression of pictorial space, all of which suit the theatricality of ghosts emerging from churning seas. Kappazuri, the resist-and-stencil technique Mori absorbed during his apprenticeship to mingei folk-art leader Serizawa Keisuke, allowed him to design, cut, and print every element of a sheet himself, in keeping with the sosaku-hanga insistence on the unity of artistic conception and execution. The technique's fibrous edges and matte surfaces give the apparitions a tactile, almost textile-like presence rather than the precision of woodblock outline. This print survives in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston collection as documented through ukiyo-e.org, where it stands as a representative example of Mori's lifelong engagement with the dramatic and supernatural subjects of classical Japanese theater translated into mid-twentieth-century stencil printmaking.