Kunichika - Kesa Gozen

Toyohara Kunichika 36 Good and Evil BeautiesThis print illustrates the beautiful Kesa Gozen. Endo Morito, the son of a minor courtier became infatuated with her despite the fact that she was married to a palace guard. He bullied her until she agreed to his advances on the condition that he murder her husband. She concealed herself in her husband’s room having first cut off her long hair. Morito stole into the room and cut off the head of the sleeping figure only discovering later that he had killed the object of his desire. He became a monk and famously spent three years doing penance beneath the freezing Nachi waterfall, the subject of many ukiyo prints. Here we see Gozen with a knife in her hand preparing to cut off her own hair in front of a table mirror wrapped in cloth. Amy Reigle Newland devoted a whole paragraph on page 18 to the significance of this series, i.e., Zen-aku sanjūroku bijin, at the beginning of her book on Kunichika: "Thirty-six good and evil beauties (Zen-aku san