Recycling Paper, illustration for The Fulling-block Shell (Kinuta gai), from the series "A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells (Genroku kasen kai awase)"

Recycling Paper, illustration for The Fulling-block Shell (Kinuta gai), from the series A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells (Genroku kasen kai awase), is a surimono designed by Katsushika Hokusai around 1816 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago. The series belongs to one of Hokusai's most learned and ambitious surimono projects of the 1810s, combining the kai-awase shell-matching game with the literary anthology of Genroku-period poets.

The game of kai-awase, played at the imperial and shogunal courts, paired two halves of clam shells whose interiors had been painted with matching verses or images. The series uses each named shell as the title for one design, paired with a Genroku-period kyōka or related verse and an unexpected pictorial subject. The Fulling-block Shell (Kinuta gai) takes its name from the kinuta, the wooden block on which cloth was beaten to soften it in classical Japanese poetry; the recurring sound of the fulling block in autumn is one of the most evocative sonic motifs in waka literature.

Hokusai illustrates the Kinuta gai with a scene of paper recycling: workers process used paper back into raw pulp for re-manufacture. The pun connects the rhythmic mechanical action of fulling cloth to the rhythmic mechanical action of breaking down old paper, while gesturing at the cultural value placed on careful reuse of materials in Edo-period Japan.

Formally, the surimono displays the refined palette, gilt accents, and minute embossing typical of the deluxe format. As a ukiyo-e print, Recycling Paper exemplifies how Katsushika Hokusai threaded literary erudition, social observation, and the resources of Edo ukiyo-e into the intricate aesthetic of the kyōka surimono.