『春雨集』　摺物帖柳月斎辰光　少女に鳥かご|Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 2: Young Woman with a Birdcage

Ryūgetsusai Shinkō

1810s · 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 first song of the warbler (uguisu) announced the coming of spring and was said to sound like hi-tsuki-hoshi (sun, moon, and stars), as expressed in the kyōka poem on this print.

Artist

Ryūgetsusai Shinkō

Date

1810s

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