The kusōzu, ‘painting of the nine stages of a decaying corpse’, portrays the sequential decay of a female cadaver in graphic detail. The subject, rooted in Buddhist devotional practices, was regularly painted and reinterpreted during half a millennium of Japanese art. The lady is identified with the ninth-century poetess Ono no Komachi. In the first painting she is seated indoors at a low red table, wearing a kimono, with a scroll in her left hand, upon which she has written her farewell poem: she is pallid, and her expression is preoccupied. In the second, she has died, and is laid out on the floor covered to her shoulders with a blanket, with a lady and a gentleman in attendance. In the third, her body is out of doors, naked apart from a loincloth, on a mat, the lower part of which is folded up over her legs; her skin now has flesh tones.