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Description
An armored samurai is wrestling a red demon and multitude of skeletons under the gaze of a grinning yellow Buddha. Toki Motosada has seized the demon by the wrist and is throwing it down. Moths flutter around them under a full moon. Where Yoshitoshi found the story for this print is not known. Japanese commentators such as Suzuki Juzo and Kitazano Kokichi, who have researched this series, cannot identify the incident depicted. Nor do Noh and Kabuki plays, or the traditional histories and collections of old stories, contain references to Gamo Sadahide or his retainer, Toki Motosada. However, Yoshitoshi's series One Hundred Ghost Stories of Japan and China contains a similar design in which a short explanation (using different personal names) is given in a large cartouche. Gamo Ujiyue set up camp near Mount Inohana in Kai Province. One of his officers, Toki Daishiro, heard of peculiar happenings at an old temple in the neighborhood and decided to investigate. Approaching the temple late at night, he peered in and saw strange phantoms cavorting. The largest possessed the form of a nio, a ferocious temple guardian image. Toki grappled with this figure and threw it down, whereupon all the apparitions vanished. The print here also resembles a design from the Ikkai Zuihitsu, or Free Brushwork by Yoshitoshi, of 1872-3, an ambitious series whose poor reception by the public intensified Yoshitoshi's depression at the time of his first mental breakdown. In the Free Brushwork design the hero Asahina Saburo is shown defeating the King of Hell in a wrestling match. In the design of Otsuji (33), Yoshitoshi takes a situation normally associated with the faithful Hatsuhana and uses the lesser-known story of Tamiya Botaro's nurse to illustrate it. Perhaps Yoshitoshi similarly liked the story of Asahina Saburo but decided to use another story with a related theme for the print reproduced here; the esoteric choice of subject may simply reflect a desire for variety. The composition of this design is wild but generally successful, except for an awkward foreshortening of Toki's arms. Yoshitoshi's signature and seal appear in a horizontal format; there is not room in the crowded design for them anywhere else. The engraving, especially of breastplate and hair, is a tour-de-force of detail. The breastplate bears a design of Fudo, an avenging Buddhist deity, surrounded by flames and holding a sword and a thong with which to bind the wicked. In this first edition of the print a metallic oxidizing pigment was used for the demon king's body, giving him a peculiar skin tone, appropriate for an underworld being. Moths flutter and miniature skeletons gesture impotently as the giant demon crashes to the ground. The halo of the animated Buddha statue echoes the round "Mirror of Past Actions" in the Free Brushwork print; onto this mirror flashed, as on a movie screen, all the good and evil deeds of a man's life when he was judged on entering Hell. The bilious yellow color and the expression of this figure create a debauched, jaundiced impression which is in keeping with other designs where Yoshitoshi parodies a decadent Buddhist establishment. A similar yellow figure also appears in the One Hundred Ghost Stories print. (John Stevenson. Thirty-Six Ghosts. Hong Kong: Blue Tiger Books, 1992.)
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