The Moon Through a Crumbling Window

The Zen patriarch Bodhidharma sits in meditation before a broken lattice window through which a pale full moon shows, a design from One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, the great series Tsukioka Yoshitoshi issued between 1885 and 1892. Each of its one hundred prints ties a moonlit moment to a figure from Japanese and Chinese history, legend, and literature, rendered with a restraint and psychological depth far removed from the crowded color of earlier ukiyo-e. Working as photography and lithography were displacing the woodblock, Yoshitoshi is regarded as the last great master of the tradition, and this series is his crowning achievement. Impressions are held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Library of Congress.