Picture of Mongaku’s Penitence

This is the same motif as a triptych nearby that Yoshitoshi designed 25 years earlier, showing the monk Mongaku doing penance for 21 days under the icy waterfall at Mount Nachi. Instead of showing him reciting incantations to the deity Fudō Myō-ō, Yoshitoshi depicted Mongaku this time in the moment of his collapse when he is rescued by the deity’s child attendants, Seitaka and Kongara. In the earlier triptych, Yoshitoshi captured foamy water with white spume but here renders the water like a cloud to emphasize that the divine beings have restored calm.