Keinen's Album of Birds and Flowers (Keinen kachō gafu) — Winter volume

The Winter volume of the Keinen kachō gafu held by the Harvard Art Museums (accession 1978.477.67.4) closes the four-season cycle with thirty-four plates of Winter imagery: pines, bamboo, plum on the eve of spring, camellias in snow, mandarin ducks on cold streams, cranes in pine groves, owls in winter trees, and the small finches and sparrows that animate the cold months of the Japanese year. Imao Keinen's drawing in this volume foregrounds the close attention to bird anatomy and to weather effects that his Maruyama-Shijō training under Suzuki Hyakunen demanded; the muted winter palette of soft greys, off-whites, dark inks, and discreet color accents is handled with the kind of restrained gradation that distinguishes the kachō gafu from contemporary commercial nishiki-e. The print run was produced in Kyoto in 1892 by the publisher Nishimura Sōzaemon, with woodblock carving by Tanaka Jirokichi and color printing by Miki Jinzaburō and Tanaka Harubei. The Harvard copy completes one of the better-documented North American institutional sets and has supported the study of Meiji color woodblock printing since its acquisition in 1978.