Dandelions for the New Year

Dandelions for the New Year is a Katsushika Hokusai ukiyo-e print of about 1801 in the Art Institute of Chicago. The work belongs to the tradition of New Year's surimono, privately commissioned prints circulated among kyoka poetry circles at the start of the year, in which a seasonal motif provided the springboard for humorous verse. Dandelions, bright and early in their flowering, made an apt emblem for the optimism associated with the first days of the year, and Hokusai treats the plant with delicate precision: clusters of flower and leaf arranged across the sheet with the care of a still life. The kyoka-album context meant that the image was inseparable from the surrounding verse, and viewers would have read flower, color, and composition through the literary play of the printed text. Edo ukiyo-e of this period drew freely on the conventions of bird-and-flower painting (kacho-e), and Katsushika Hokusai's restrained handling here demonstrates how comfortably the genre adapted to the surimono format. The print also shows Hokusai working in the same observational mode that fills the parallel pages of his sketchbooks, soon to be gathered as Hokusai manga. As a ukiyo-e print, Dandelions for the New Year is a quiet but characteristic example of his ability to compress seasonal symbolism, botanical observation, and literary play into a single small sheet. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves the delicate color and finely cut blocks of the original printing.