九代目市村羽左衛門・三代目大谷廣次|Kabuki Actors Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Ko-kakeyama and Ōtani Hiroji III as Kōga Saburō

Katsukawa Shunshō　勝川春章

ca. 1771 · Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper · Asian Art

In the play Branches of a Flowering Potted Tree (Konohana Yotsugi no Hachinoki), the devil Ko-kakeyama (the evil spirit of Wakasa no Zenji Yasumura) holds a scroll in his mouth and a hammer in his hand and wears a crown of three flaming candles on his head. At the hour of the ox (two to four in the morning) on a rainy night, he performs the incantation known as ushi no toki mairi, driving three nails into the boll of a tree and uttering a curse upon the object of his hatred. Kōga Saburō, seated in the foreground, is ordered to defeat this devil spirit.

Artist

Katsukawa Shunshō　勝川春章

Date

ca. 1771

Medium

Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1918