Scented Pillow, Pickled Eggplant Box and Takarabune Print/The Pillow Shell (Makuragai), from the series Shell-Matching Game with Genroku Poets (Genroku kasen kai-awase)

Scented Pillow, Pickled Eggplant Box and Takarabune Print, also known as The Pillow Shell (Makuragai), is a richly layered surimono from Katsushika Hokusai's 1821 series Shell-Matching Game with Genroku Poets (Genroku kasen kai-awase). The series transforms the courtly Heian pastime of kai-awase, in which pairs of painted shells were matched to lines of poetry, into a sophisticated literary game involving the celebrated Genroku-era poets of the late seventeenth century. In this ukiyo-e print Hokusai sets a scented pillow, a lacquered box of pickled eggplant, and a paper print of the takarabune, the legendary treasure ship that brings the Seven Lucky Gods into homes at New Year, around the symbolic makuragai pillow shell. The objects evoke the boudoir, the kitchen, and the auspicious threshold of the new year, weaving domestic intimacy with poetic allusion. As a master of Edo ukiyo-e, Hokusai produces compositions that reward slow reading: the carefully rendered textiles, the calligraphic restraint of the inscribed kyoka, and the use of metallic pigments and blind embossing all reflect the high production values of privately commissioned surimono. The print survives in fine condition at the Harvard Art Museums, where it can be studied alongside other plates in the Genroku kasen kai-awase set. For collectors, the work exemplifies Hokusai's deep engagement with Japan's classical and Genroku poetic past, refracted through the quiet luxury of Edo period interiors.