Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡芳年) (artist 04/30/1839 – 06/09/1892)
Kusunoki Tamonmaru Masayuki (楠多門丸正行) from the series One Hundred Ghost Stories from China and Japan (Wakan hyaku monogatari - 和漢百物語)
02/1865
9.5 in x 14.125 in (Overall dimensions) Japanese woodblock print
Signed: Ikkaisai Yoshitoshi ga
一魁斎芳年画
Publisher: Daikokuya Kinnosuke
(Marks 033 - seal not listed)
Combined date and censor seal: 2/1865 and aratame
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
National Diet Library
Los Angeles County Museum of Art The text reads:
Kusunoki Masashige kanan, nanchō munino ryōshō tari. Masayuki imada itokenakikoro aruyo teishōni oritachitsu mokuba o kokoromi itamaishini ara ayashimubeshi kotsuzento ikko no yōkai arawaretsutsu Masayuki megakete tobikakaruo sarani osoruru iromonaku odorikakatte sashitometari. Hitobito hasetsuke tenkennasuni toshifuru tanuki narikeru tozo.
橘正成か男 南朝無二の良将たり 正行いまだ幼頃有夜庭上に下立つ木馬を試み居給ひしに嗚呼あやしむべし忽然と一個の妖怪あらはれつゝ正行目がけて飛かゝるを更に恐怖る色もなく踊りかゝつて刺止たり 人々走付転見なすに年経狸也けるとぞ 墨塘了古記
Masayuki was the eldest son of Tachibana Masashige and the finest general of Nanchō [Southern Dynasty]. One night when he was a little boy, he went down to the garden to try out a wooden horse. O, how strange, a monster appeared [from the wooden horse] and menaced Masayuki. Without showing any sign of fear, the boy sprang upon the monster and stabbed him to death. People rushed out to examine the monster, which turned out to be an old badger.
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Yoshitoshi mixes two stories together to give us this picture. There is no wooden horse and the scene takes place indoors and not in a garden.
Historically this print represents a period, 1333-92, when there were two rival capitals. One was ruled by the emperor Go-Daigo and the other by Ashikaga shoguns.
"Kusunoki Masashige, Go-Daigo's most competent general, commited [sic] suicide after the disastrous Battle of Minatogawa... Masayuki was his eldest son. A tale related about Masayuki, taken from Nansei senkō zukai (Illustrated War Stories of the Nanchō Era), tells how he killed a magic badger that appeared one night in the form of a woman's head lit by ghostly flames.
A tale that more neatly fits the text on this design is told of the young Takeda Katsuchiyo, the boyhood name of Takeda Shingen, an important general of the Momoyama period who lived two hundred years after Kusunoki Masayuki. The story is taken from the Ehon kōetsu gunki (War Stories of the Kōetsu Region), an illustrated account of Shingen's life published in 1808. In this, the young Takeda Shingen encountered a badger that took the form of the wooden structure on which he stored his war-saddle. The badger made fun of him when he came out to practice one moonlit night; Takeda immediately struck out with his sword, to find he had killed an old badger."
Quoted from: Yoshitoshi's Strange Tales by John Stevenson, p. 36.
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Illustrated:
1) in color in Japanese Yōkai and Other Supernatural Beings: Authentic Paintings and Prints of 100 Ghosts, Demons, Monsters and Magicians by Andreas Marks, Tuttle Publishing, 2023, page 40. This exact print is the one illustrated in this volume.
2) in a full-page colored reproduction in Yoshitoshi's Strange Tales by John Stevenson, Hotei Publishing, 2005, page 37.
Daikokuya Kinnosuke (大黒屋金之助) (publisher)
Yūrei-zu (幽霊図 - ghosts demons monsters and spirits) (genre)