Shinsen Banshoku zukō

This woodblock-printed book (Shinsen Banshoku zuko, roughly translated as Newly Selected Illustrations of All Kinds of Trades), dated to the 1830s or 1840s and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, belongs to the genre of Edo period illustrated reference works that catalogued professions, tools, and the material culture of everyday Japanese life. Books of this type were both practical reference manuals and aesthetic objects, with carefully designed page layouts and printed illustrations that drew on the same woodblock technology used for single-sheet prints. The volume offers depictions of various trades and occupations, presenting the working life of urban Edo with documentary attention and visual charm. Illustrated books were a significant secondary market for ukiyo-e designers, who supplied artwork for everything from poetry anthologies to gardening manuals, and they offered artists a different kind of creative space than the single-sheet print: serial composition, sequential narrative, and the integration of text and image across the page opening. Hokuju's contributions to the genre, like this volume, expand the picture of his practice beyond the famous Edo landscape series and show him working across the full range of woodblock formats available in his era.