Kabuki Actors Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Ko-kakeyama and Ōtani Hiroji III as Kōga Saburō

Kabuki Actors Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Ko-kakeyama and Ōtani Hiroji III as Kōga Saburō

Katsukawa Shunshō　勝川春章

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the play Branches of a Flowering Potted Tree (Konohana Yotsugi no Hachinoki), the devil Ko-kakeyama (the evil spirit of Wakasa no Zenji Yasumura) holds a scroll in his mouth and a hammer in his hand and wears a crown of three flaming candles on his head. At the hour of the ox (two to four in the morning) on a rainy night, he performs the incantation known as ushi no toki mairi, driving three nails into the boll of a tree and uttering a curse upon the object of his hatred. Kōga Saburō, seated in the foreground, is ordered to defeat this devil spirit.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Kabuki Actors Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Ko-kakeyama and Ōtani Hiroji III as Kōga SaburōKabuki Actors Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Ko-kakeyama and Ōtani Hiroji III as Kōga SaburōKabuki Actors Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Ko-kakeyama and Ōtani Hiroji III as Kōga SaburōKabuki Actors Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Ko-kakeyama and Ōtani Hiroji III as Kōga SaburōKabuki Actors Ichimura Uzaemon IX as Ko-kakeyama and Ōtani Hiroji III as Kōga Saburō

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.