[The itinerant monk Shintoku cures a mute girl]

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A wandering monk named Shintoku is the central figure here, shown restoring speech to a girl who could not talk. The print's two pages suggest it was part of an illustrated book rather than a single sheet, a common form in Japan's Edo period, when woodblock printing reached a wide popular audience. Stories of itinerant monks who healed the sick through prayer, ritual, or the power of their faith circulated widely at the time, and the subject shows how such tales blended religious belief with ideas about illness and the supernatural. The printed record dates the work to about 1713, and its focus on a cure for a mute child gives a useful window into how early eighteenth-century readers understood healing and the wonders attributed to holy men.

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