Thank you for visiting. Woodblock Print Yoshitoshi Tsukioka “One hundred Aspects of the Moon, Gravemarker moon”. Size: 35.5cm x 24cm (14in x 9.4in). Paper: Traditional Japanese paper. This piece depicts a scene from the Noh play’Sotoba Komachi,’ which is based on Ono no Komachi, a poet of the Heian period and one of the Six Poetic Geniuses. It reveals one aspect of Yoshitoshi’s interest in Noh at the time. Noh plays featuring Komachi are collectively known as the’Seven Komachi,’ and include the following works:’Kiyomizu Komachi,”Amagoi Komachi,”Omu Komachi,”Soshi Arai Komachi,”Kayoi Komachi,”Sekidera Komachi,’ and’Sotoba Komachi. Originally, a’sotoba’ referred to a building for enshrining the Buddha’s relics and conducting memorial services, in other words, a Buddhist pagoda. However, in Japanese Buddhism, it refers to a wooden tablet fashioned in the image of a Buddhist pagoda (ita-sotoba), used in cemeteries and elsewhere to memorialize the deceased. This artwork should be understood as a scene where an old woman is seated against this wooden memorial tablet, illuminated by the moon at dawn. A ukiyo-e artist active from the late Edo period to the early Meiji period. He became a student of Utagawa Kuniyoshi at the age of 12. His artistic work was wide-ranging, encompassing various genres of ukiyo-e such as historical paintings, portraits of beautiful women, genre paintings, classical paintings, and battle paintings, each with his unique style. He demonstrated ingenuity in composition and technique, and his technique of stopping and showing moments of movement like stop-motion is reminiscent of modern manga and graphic novels, leading to his reputation as a pioneer of graphic novels. These charges are the responsibility of the purchaser.