Courting Komachi (Kayoi Komachi), from the series Famous Scenes from Japanese Puppet Plays (Yamato irotake)
Okumura Masanobu (Japanese, 1686-1764)
Edo period (1615–1868), 1705/06
- Medium
- Woodblock print; oban
- Classification
- Dimensions
- 27.3 × 39.1 cm (10 3/4 × 15 7/16 in.)
- Culture
- Japan
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Two actors in an imagined Kabuki drama enact a scene from a puppet play based on a legend about ninth-century poet Ono no Komachi. Komachi instructed a suitor to prove his love by visiting her on 100 successive days. On the final day, he did not appear because he was caught in a storm and died. Here the suitor’s ghost visits Komachi in the middle of the night. The Art Institute and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, are the only two museums with a full set of this series of prints by Okumura Masanobu.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
