Two Women of Nojiri Who Were Robbed, Tied to Trees, and Eaten by Wolves
Summary
Two women who were reportedly robbed and bound to trees while travelling near Nojiri are shown after being attacked by wolves. Their partially unclothed bodies hang against dark tree trunks while a pack of animals tears at their flesh amid pools and streams of blood. The horror of the scene is framed as illustrated news: a large text panel recounts the incident above the image, and a red series cartouche identifies the Yūbin Hōchi Shinbun and issue number 623.
Visual Description
The composition is divided into a text-heavy upper register and a violent pictorial scene below. A broad cream-colored text panel bordered in green occupies the upper left and center, while a scalloped red cartouche at upper right bears the series title and issue number. Beneath this, two women are tied upright against dark, gnarled tree trunks in a nearly black woodland. The woman at left wears a red patterned garment that has fallen away from her shoulders and torso. Her arms appear drawn behind the tree, and broad bands of rope encircle her upper body and thighs. Her head tilts backward, her hair disheveled, and her face is pale against the dark background. The woman at right wears a purple patterned upper garment and a blue lower garment stained with blood. Her upper body slumps forward, and her arms appear constrained behind the trunk. Rope or binding bands cross her torso and waist. Both figures are partially stripped, but the visual emphasis is on vulnerability, mutilation, and death rather than erotic display. Several wolves or wolf-like dogs cluster across the foreground. One bites at the left woman's lower leg, another pulls at bloodied tissue near the center, and others feed around severed or mutilated remains. Bright red blood appears on the women's legs, garments, the animals' mouths, and the gray ground. The palette contrasts saturated red, blue, purple, green, and yellow with the oppressive black-brown forest. The surviving sheet appears substantially complete, with a purple printed border around the composition. There is no evidence that it formed part of a diptych or triptych.
History and Context
Historical Context
The two women are not identified by name in the museum and specialist summaries consulted. They are described as a wife and a neighboring woman who were travelling near Nojiri in Shinano Province. According to later catalog descriptions, robbers assaulted them, stripped them of valuables, and tied them to trees, where wolves subsequently attacked and killed them. The degree to which the account reflects a documented event, journalistic embellishment, or moralized popular narrative requires verification against the original newspaper article.
Print History
The print was produced in August 1875 as number 623 in Yoshitoshi's Yūbin Hōchi Shinbun series. Surviving impressions are recorded in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Edo-Tokyo Museum, the Tokyo Metropolitan Library, and other collections. The print circulated as a separate nishiki-e sheet rather than as an illustration physically printed inside the newspaper. Differences among impressions include trimming, fading, color strength, abrasion, repairs, and the survival of the outer border.
Cultural Context
Early Meiji illustrated news prints translated reports of crime, disaster, scandal, unusual events, and exemplary behavior into the established visual language of ukiyo-e. They offered audiences a hybrid of modern journalism and sensational pictorial storytelling. Yoshitoshi was particularly effective at converting terse reports into emotionally charged scenes. The violence in No. 623 belongs to the nineteenth-century taste for muzan-e, or images of cruelty and gruesome death, but it also served the commercial logic of the new news market. The women's exposed bodies and helpless positions heighten horror and pathos, while the animal attack transforms a reported crime into a nearly gothic spectacle.
Series Context
Yoshitoshi designed dozens of images for the Yūbin Hōchi Shinbun between 1875 and 1876. The series covered political events, crime, accidents, strange occurrences, public-interest stories, acts of loyalty, and supernatural tales. Each sheet typically combined a large illustrated scene with a prominent series cartouche and an extensive prose account. No. 623 is among the most graphically violent designs in the series and exemplifies Yoshitoshi's ability to stage contemporary news with the dramatic compression associated with his earlier warrior and murder prints.
Known Variants
Institutional records document multiple impressions of the design. Some examples retain more of the purple border, while others are trimmed closer to the green text frame or image area. Color varies considerably, particularly in the purple border, red garments, blue skirt, and blood pigments. No distinct recut state or substantially altered edition has been established in the sources reviewed.
Relevance to Kinbaku
The print is relevant to the history of rope restraint because the women are visibly bound to trees as part of a robbery and abandonment narrative. The restraint is custodial and homicidal rather than erotic or consensual, and the design offers no evidence of modern kinbaku technique.
Historical Connections
The image demonstrates the continued legibility of rope as an instrument of capture, immobilization, and criminal violence in early Meiji visual culture. The women are tied so that they cannot flee or defend themselves, converting ordinary trees into instruments of confinement. The scene may be compared with arrest, transport, punishment, and captivity imagery, but it does not establish a direct lineage to erotic rope bondage.
Iconographic Connections
The upright restrained bodies, exposed shoulders, displaced garments, ropes crossing the torso and thighs, and contrast between pale flesh and dark surroundings create a visual vocabulary of helplessness. The trees function as rigid anchor points, while the animals occupy the mobile foreground. The design therefore stages a stark opposition between immobilized human bodies and uncontrolled animal movement. For kinbaku researchers, the image is useful for examining how rope restraint intensifies narrative danger and directs attention to bodily vulnerability.
Interpretive Cautions
The print should not be classified as erotic kinbaku. Partial nudity is present, but it serves a violent crime narrative and heightens horror. The bindings may be pictorial simplifications rather than technically reliable records of actual restraint. The exact number, placement, and structure of the ropes are partly obscured by clothing, tree trunks, darkness, and the small reproduction. Modern readings should also avoid treating the victims' suffering as evidence of consensual or sexual practice. Any comparison with modern kinbaku must remain iconographic and historical rather than genealogical.
Research Value
The print is important for studying the representation of women bound to fixed objects, the relationship between restraint and narrative helplessness, and the transformation of newspaper crime reports into spectacular images. It also permits comparison between Yoshitoshi's contemporary news prints and his earlier theatrical or legendary scenes of violence. A full transcription of the text could clarify the women's identities, the sequence of the robbery, the role of the attackers, and the extent to which the wolves were presented as factual, moralizing, or sensational.
Themes
Subjects and Keywords
Sources
- Philadelphia Museum of Art: Two Women of Nojiri Who Were Set Upon while Travelling, Robbed, Tied to Trees, and Eaten by Wolves, No. 623 from the series The Postal Newspaper — Confirms the artist, subject, series, issue number, and general 1875–1876 dating.
- Ota Memorial Museum of Art: Illustration Based on the Newspaper Yūbin Hōchi Shinbun: No. 623 — Confirms the title, artist, and date of August 1875.
- Chiba City Museum of Art: Yoshitoshi and Yoshiiku Newspaper Prints exhibition checklist, Yūbin Hōchi Shinbun No. 623 — Confirms the August 1875 date, publisher Kinshōdō, artist signature form, and dimensions of approximately 35.7 by 24.0 centimeters.
- Tokyo Metropolitan Library via Ukiyo-e.org: Yūbin Hōchi Shinbun, No. 623 — Provides an institutional comparison image and confirms the artist, Japanese series title, and issue number.
- Museum of Fine Arts Boston via Ukiyo-e.org: No. 623 from the series The Post Dispatch Newspaper — Provides a museum comparison record for the same Yoshitoshi design.
- Japanese Booksellers Association: Yūbin Hōchi Shinbun No. 623 by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi — Confirms Yoshitoshi, publisher Kinshōdō, the 1875 date, approximate dimensions, and the narrative of two women near Nojiri who were robbed, tied to trees, and attacked by wolves.
- Yoshitoshi.net: Postal News, No. 623 — Identifies the design within the complete series sequence and summarizes its subject as two women of Nojiri robbed, tied to trees, and eaten by wolves.
