The Arima Ghost Cat - Snow, Moon and Flowers - Japanese Woodblock Print - - Toyohara Yoshu Chikanobu (1838-1912) - Japan - Meiji period (1868-1912)

Artist: Toyohara (Yōshū) Chikanobu (楊洲周延, 1838–1912)
Title: 雪月花 江戸 本所業平橋の雪 — Setsugekka: Edo — Snow at Narihira Bridge in Honjo, with the Arima household, the clam-seller Yokichi and the sumo wrestler Onogawa Kisaburō

Series: Setsugekka (雪月花, Snow, Moon and Flowers)
Publisher: Kobayashi Tetsujirō (小林鉄次郎)
Date: 1885 (Meiji 18)
Technique: Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and colour on paper
Format: Ōban tate-e, approx. 36 × 24 cm
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Condition: Very good impression with unfaded colour — the deep crimsons and bokashi in the background are fully preserved. Full margins with the complete publication data intact. Light overall toning of the paper more present at the bottom margins, there is some minor remnants of backing on the backside. Please check the images!
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About the print:

This is the "snow" design of the Edo sheet in Chikanobu's Setsugekka, and its story is one of the most famous ghost tales of old Edo: the Arima Neko Sōdō, the Ghost Cat Affair of the Arima house. Together with the Nabeshima and Okazaki cat stories, it is counted among the three great ghost-cat tales of Japan. It was spread mainly through kōdan storytelling and is set in the Edo residence of the Arima family, lords of Kurume domain, at Akabane.

In the best-known version, a waiting-woman named Otaki (known in service as Sekiya) saves her lord from a mad dog and asks only one reward: the life of the kitten the dog had been chasing. Her rise into the lord's favour made her rivals among the older ladies-in-waiting jealous, and they bullied her until she took her own life – after which those women were killed one by one by a monstrous cat. The creature is finally destroyed by the Arima house's own sponsored sumo wrestler, Onogawa Kisaburō, at the risk of his life. Onogawa was a real historical figure, one of the great yokozuna of the late eighteenth century, and his fight with the cat was performed widely in theatres and storytelling halls in the late Edo period. The title cartouche also names the clam-seller Yokichi, one of the townsfolk figures who appear in the tale's popular retellings, and places the whole scene in the snow at Narihira Bridge in Honjo on the east bank of the Sumida.
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About the Setsugekka series:

The Setsugekka series, published between 1884 and 1886 by the prestigious publisher Kobayashi Tetsujirō, comprises fifty individual ōban prints. Its title derives from an ancient Chinese poetic motif associating snow, moon and flowers with the seasons, but the true subject of the series is a sweeping panorama of Japanese history, mythology and literature — from court tales and Noh drama to warrior legends and supernatural folklore. The thematic range is extraordinary: across fifty designs, Chikanobu moves from Heian-era romance to Sengoku battlefield drama, from Chinese legend to the ghost stories of Edo, treating each subject with a distinctive compositional approach and mood. In this respect, the Setsugekka stands alongside Yoshitoshi's Tsuki Hyakushi (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon) as one of the great narrative series of the late nineteenth century, and the two are regularly compared by scholars and collectors alike.

What sets the Setsugekka apart visually is the richness and durability of its pigments. Spectroscopic research published in Heritage Science has demonstrated that the dominant red pigment in nishiki-e prints of this precise period (1884–1886) was not aniline dye — as is commonly assumed for Meiji prints — but cochineal carmine, a lake pigment formed from carminic acid precipitated with aluminium salts into an insoluble compound, typically mixed with vermilion (mercuric sulfide), a wholly inorganic mineral pigment. This carmine-vermilion combination produces the deep, saturated crimsons visible in the present print and accounts for their remarkable resistance to fading and water damage — a stark contrast to the fugitive naphthol reds that would appear in cheaper prints only after 1889. Combined with Kobayashi Tetsujirō's premium production standards — thicker pigment applications, high-quality paper, and deluxe printing techniques including fine bokashi and occasional metallic accents — the Setsugekka prints have retained their chromatic intensity with astonishing fidelity over nearly a century and a half.