Ferry boat on the Sumida River, illustration for the Capital Shell (Miyako-gai), from the series "A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells (Genroku kasen kai awase)"

Ferry Boat on the Sumida River, illustration for the Capital Shell, comes from Katsushika Hokusai's A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells, a surimono series of around 1821. The kai awase set pairs literary shells with seasonal Edo subjects; here the miyakogai, sometimes translated as the capital shell, is matched with the everyday spectacle of a ferry crossing the Sumida River. Hokusai depicts the long, low boat carrying its passengers across the water, with carefully observed travelers and the boatman's pole defining a horizontal rhythm. As a privately commissioned surimono, the sheet was printed on thick paper for a poetry circle, employing fine pigments, metallic accents, and embossing well beyond commercial Edo ukiyo-e standards. The design balances classical literary allusion with a genuinely lived Edo scene, treating an ordinary river crossing as a worthy companion to an antique shell name. Hokusai's drawing is economical and confident, with each figure given a distinct posture and the entire boat composed as a single flowing form. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this ukiyo-e print as part of its surimono holdings, providing essential context for Katsushika Hokusai's role in the Edo ukiyo-e tradition of privately produced, poetry-driven prints during the Bunsei period.