The Illustrated Tale of Oishi Hyōroku

Discussion

FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

This incomplete handscroll illustrates part of the story of Oishi Hyoroku, a young man tasked with battling fox apparitions who were creating problems in his town. In other extant versions of the scroll, the story is set in the fall of 1624 in Kagoshima in southern Japan. Throughout the story, Hyoroku is tricked and terrified by the foxes that shift their shapes into a variety of monstrous phantoms. After repeated humiliations, he eventually captures two of the foxes. In this version, colloquial texts that function like text blurbs in comics appear throughout the scroll, but the main text is missing.

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