Byobu kakemono ekagami: Kakemono e-zukushi

Dated 1701 (Genroku 14) and held in the Art Institute of Chicago, this woodblock-printed book is identified as Byobu kakemono ekagami: Kakemono e-zukushi, a posthumous publication or late-life production related to Moronobu's earlier Byobu kakemono ekagami (Panorama of Paintings on Screens and Hanging Scrolls) of 1682. The 1701 dating, seven years after Moronobu's 1694 death, suggests either a posthumous reissue or a sequel volume produced from blocks completed during his lifetime, a common publishing practice in the early eighteenth century for established artists whose names retained commercial value. The book's organizing concept, a printed mirror or compendium of paintings as they appeared on the great formats of Japanese visual culture, screens and hanging scrolls, demonstrates Moronobu's project of translating the elite painting tradition into the popular medium of the woodblock-printed book. The Kakemono e-zukushi subtitle indicates an exhaustive treatment of hanging-scroll formats, with each opening likely organized around a particular subject type or compositional convention. Printed in sumizuri-e, the book exemplifies the ehon as a vehicle for transmitting elite pictorial knowledge to the broad Edo readership.