『春雨集』　摺物帖柳々居辰斎画　紅梅|Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 1: Plum Tree in Bloom

Ryūryūkyo Shinsai

ca. 1805–10 · Privately published woodblock prints (surimono) mounted in an album; ink and color on paper · Asian Art

Surimono are privately published woodblock prints, usually commissioned by individual poets or poetry groups as a form of New Year’s greeting card. The poems, most commonly kyōka (witty thirty-one syllable verse), inscribed on the prints usually include felicitous imagery connected with spring, which in the lunar calendar begins on the first day of the first month. Themes of surimono are often erudite, frequently alluding to Japanese literary classics in both texts and images. The blossoming of the plum tree was a harbinger of spring, the beginning of the New Year in the lunar calendar.

Artist

Ryūryūkyo Shinsai

Date

ca. 1805–10

Medium

Privately published woodblock prints (surimono) mounted in an album; ink and color on paper

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929