Kuniyoshi - Okute - The Old Woman of the Lone House

  Kuniyoshi Thrilling scene of "The Old Woman of the Lone House" (Hitotsuya rōba 一ツ家老婆), from the series Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road. "In Japanese literature, the horror-story trope of a lonely house on a desolate moor, where unwary travelers meet terrible fates, goes back at least to the eleventh century, when the legend of Kurozuka in the northern province of Mutsu was mentioned in a poem in the anthology Collected Poetic Gleanings (Shūiwakashū). The story of a murderous old woman who is really a demon was later dramatized in the nō play called Kurozuka or Adachigahara. The Edo-period version of the story, frequently illustrated by Kuniyoshi and his pupils, takes place at Asajigahara on the outskirts of Edo, not far from the great temple of the bodhisattva Kannon at Asakusa. An evil old woman who lives in a solitary house on the moor takes in travelers and then murders them for their belongings. Her weapon is a large rock suspended in the dark rafters above the head of