This ukiyo-e woodblock print, titled “Female Ghost” (Yaeki hime norei), was created by Utagawa Kunisada (also known as Toyokuni III) in 1852. It depicts the ghost of Princess Yaeki, a character from the kabuki play “Otogibanashi Hakata no imaori,” performed at Edo’s Nakamura-za theatre in 1852. The central figure is a female spirit with long, flowing black hair, dressed in a pale blue kimono with long sleeves (furisode), floating above a grassy field with pine boughs framing her head. She holds a rolled-up scroll in her right hand and a tied parcel in her left, with the fletching of a single arrow peeking over her right shoulder. The print is signed “Toyokuni ga” within a red oval toshidama-in cartouche in the lower right corner and was published by Yamamoto-ya Heikichi (Eiky?d?).
