Mount Otowa moon–Bright God Tamura. No. 35 from the series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon

This scene comes from a Noh play about a general who was deified into the Shinto god Tamura. When three itinerant monks visit the Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto on a moonlit night, a youth with a broom appears and begins to sweep fallen cherry blossoms. He briefly tells them about the temple’s history and then disappears. After a commoner comes on stage and identifies the youth as the ghost of Tamura, the monks chant sutras all night and Tamura’s ghost appears again, but in the form of the general who tells them how he conquered his enemies with the help of the thousand-armed Kannon. The figure depicted here wears a Noh mask and seems to be a combination of both manifestations of Tamura’s ghost. (“Moon,” curated by Ellen Avril and presented at the Johnson Museum August 25, 2018-January 13, 2019)