Lin Xiangru and Kojima Takanori, from the series "Five Sibling Pictures of China and Japan for the Zakurogaki Group (Zakurogaki-ren goban no uchi wakan e-kyodai)"

Lin Xiangru and Kojima Takanori is an ukiyo-e print by Katsushika Hokusai from the series Five Sibling Pictures of China and Japan for the Zakurogaki Group (Zakurogaki-ren goban no uchi wakan e-kyodai), dated about 1821 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago. The Zakurogaki-ren was a poetry club whose members commissioned surimono prints to circulate among friends and exchange at the New Year. Each design in this series pairs a Chinese and a Japanese historical figure as conceptual siblings, asking viewers to recognize parallels between the two cultural traditions. Lin Xiangru, a celebrated minister of the Warring States era, is famed for outwitting a powerful king to recover a precious jade disc; Kojima Takanori, a fourteenth-century Japanese loyalist, inscribed a poem on a cherry tree promising allegiance to the exiled Emperor Go-Daigo. Hokusai pairs these figures in elegant composition, using the surimono's privileged production values, metallic pigments, careful color registration, and embossing, to honor both literary and historical reference. As an Edo ukiyo-e print, the work demonstrates how privately commissioned surimono fostered learned visual play with classical Chinese and Japanese sources. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves Hokusai's refined linework and saturated color, allowing this transcultural pairing to retain its intellectual charm.