A Collection of Flowers and Birds (Kacho zukushi)

Dated 1683 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago, A Collection of Flowers and Birds (Kacho zukushi) is Moronobu's contribution to the kacho-ga genre, the bird-and-flower painting tradition that runs deep in East Asian art history. The book's title employs the zukushi convention, an exhaustive collection or compendium, and arranges paired birds and flowers across its openings in the seasonal sequence that organizes most kacho-ga production. Printed in sumizuri-e, the single-block black-ink technique, the book relies on Moronobu's command of line to handle the textural variety of bird plumage, flower petals, leaves, branches, and rocks. His textile-trained background is again evident in his treatment of feather patterns, which he renders with the same kind of dense, articulated patterning that he applied to brocade. The book helped translate the kacho-ga tradition, previously the province of painted scrolls and screens, into the affordable and reproducible medium of woodblock print, contributing to the broader Moronobu project of democratizing access to elite pictorial traditions. Later kacho-ga masters, including Koryusai, Sosen, Hokusai, and Hiroshige, would all work within a printed tradition that Moronobu helped to found.