泉鏡花の初めての戯曲「深沙大王」が本郷座で上演されるにあたり、絵看板として制作されました。実際には演目が「高野聖」に変更されたため、作品として烏合会第10回展に出品されました。
「深沙大王」は、越前の国を舞台に、横暴な県会議員の倉持伝助を深沙大王の社に棲む変化（へんげ）たちが不思議な力で懲らしめる物語です。画面手前では、元名主の息子の村山松三郎と、松三郎のかつての許嫁で伝助の妾であるお俊（しゅん）の二人が、伝助に追い詰められて、心中をしようと重い足取りで歩いています。画面上部には、深沙大王の社を棲家とする妖怪変化たち――馬、猿、狐、紙雛、翁の姿が描かれています。

Scene from the Play Shinja-Daiō by Izumi Kyōka (1904)
color on silk; hanging scroll
169.0 x 85.5 cm
(First exhibited at the 10th Ugōkai Exhibition)

Kiyokata produced this painting for a pictorial billboard to be displayed outside the Hongoza theater for the staging of Izumi Kyōka’s first play, Shinja-Daiō. Since that play was actually replaced by a production of Kyōka’s Kōya hijiri (The Saint of Mt. Kōya), Kiyokata’s painting was shown at the tenth Ugōkai Exhibition instead.
The play Shinja-Daiō is set in the province of Echizen. It tells the story of how a band of goblins inhabiting Shinja-Daiō shrine use their supernatural powers to punish the tyrannical Kuramochi Densuke, a member of the local assembly. The couple in the foreground are Murayama Matsusaburō, the son of the former village headman, and O-Shun, who is Matsusaburōs’s former fiancé and Densuke’s mistress. Pursued by Densuke, the couple are walking with heavy steps as they prepare to commit double love suicide. At the top of the canvas, Kiyokata has painted the band of goblins inhabiting Shinja Daiō shrine: a horse, a monkey, a fox, a kami-bina paper doll, and an old man.