Hanging Abalone Out to Dry, illustration for Abalone (Awabi), from the series "A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells (Genroku kasen kai awase)"

Hanging Abalone Out to Dry, illustration for Abalone (Awabi) from the Katsushika Hokusai series A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells (Genroku kasen kai awase), is an Edo ukiyo-e print of 1814 in the Art Institute of Chicago. The series belongs to the elaborate surimono tradition, private commissions printed in small editions for poetry clubs with luxurious effects such as mica, blind printing and metallic pigment. Each design pairs a shell name with a Genroku-era poem, and Hokusai illustrates the shell through a related scene from daily life. Here the awabi, a prized shellfish, becomes a glimpse of coastal labor, with strings of the dried meat hung up in the sun. The composition draws on the artist's habit of building landscape from working figures rather than from pure scenery. As an Edo ukiyo-e print connected to a poetry circle, the sheet is also a document of how literate Edo townspeople used printed images to support their own creative practice. Hokusai's line is precise but never showy, leaving room for the poem on the same sheet. For collectors and students, the print is a useful entry point into the surimono side of his career, alongside the better-known single-sheet landscapes. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the work.