About This Print

Number 44* of 200 prints issued as part of the series Nōga taikan (Encyclopedia of Noh Plays) depicting a scene from the play Miidera often attributed to the playwright Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443).¹  This print still maintains its semi-transparent cover sheet providing information on the play and its characters.


* number appears in the lower right hand of the cover sheet.

 For two other depictions of this play by the artist see Nōgakuzue, Miidera and Nōgaku hyakuban, Miidera.

¹ According to the The Ohtsuki Noh Theatre Foundation website "recent scholarship suggest a later author."

The Play - Miidera (The Miidera Temple) by Zeami

Source: A Guide to No, P.G. O'Neill, Hinoki Shoten, 1929, p. 108.

Characters:

Shite - the mother of Semmitsu

Kyōgen - a soothsayer

Ko-kata - the child of Semmitsu

Waki - a priest of Miidera

Waki-tsure - two attendant priests

Kyōgen - a servant

A mother whose child has disappeared makes a long pilgrimage to the Kyōmizu-dera in Kyoto and asks the goddess Kannon to help her find him again.  She has a dream which is interpreted by a fortune-teller to mean that she must go to the temple called Mii-dera to meet her son again.  Arriving there on the night of the full moon quite unbalanced through anxiety and grief, she rings the temple bell.  The priests of the temple, who are looking after her son Semmitsu and have been viewing the moon with him, come up to reproach her.  But as they talk, it is found that she is the boy's mother and the two are happily reunited.

Print Details

IHL Catalog	#792
Title	Miidera 三井寺 (The Miidera Temple)
Series	Nōga taikan 能画大鑑 (Encyclopedia of Noh Plays or A Great Mirror of Noh Pictures or A Great Collection of Noh Pictures)
Artist	Tsukioka Kōgyo (1869-1927)
Signature	Kōgyo
Seal	rai (Thunder) seal, seal no. 12, p. 170 in The Beauty of Silence: Nō and Nature Prints by Tsukioka Kōgyo (1869-1927), Robert Schaap & J. Thomas Rimer, Hotei Publishing, 2010.
Date	December 25, 1926
Edition	unknown
Publisher	Seibi Shoten (or Seibi Shoin), Tokyo
Carver	Uchida Eikichi
Printer	Yoshida Takesaburō
Impression	excellent
Colors	excellent
Condition	excellent - 1 pin hole upper left; binding holes right side;  not backed
Genre	ukiyo-e; 能楽図絵 Nōgaku zue [Noh play picture]
Miscellaneous	print #44
Format	oban yoko-e
H x W Paper	10 x 14 5/8 in. (25.4 x 37.1 cm)
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