Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre

In the ruined Sōma palace, Princess Takiyasha — daughter of the executed rebel Taira no Masakado — reads a spell from her scroll as a colossal skeleton tears through the blinds toward the warrior Ōya no Tarō Mitsukuni. The legend calls for an army of small skeletons; Kuniyoshi conjured one giant instead, its anatomy studied from imported Dutch medical illustrations, and let it swallow two of the three sheets — the most audacious composition in ukiyo-e. The skeleton is anatomically exact down to the vertebrae — not a cartoon of death but the thing itself; the palace blind hangs shredded, the ruin dissolving into the same darkness the bones climb out of. "A fallen house does not forget. It only grows larger in the dark."

Maker

Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Date

c. 1844

Medium of the original

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00413