The Fishermen of Katase Hauling in Their Nets: The Purple Shell (Murasakigai)

The Fishermen of Katase Hauling in Their Nets: The Purple Shell (Murasakigai) is an ukiyo-e print by Katsushika Hokusai from the series A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells, completed around 1816 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago. Hokusai depicts coastal laborers at Katase, a fishing village near Enoshima Island in Sagami Province, drawing in heavy nets at the water's edge. The composition centers on physical exertion: shoulders straining against rope, feet braced in wet sand, hands reaching for the catch beneath the surface. Behind them, the sea opens to a horizon hinting at Enoshima and the wider Pacific. The design is paired with a Genroku-period waka poem and the symbolic murasakigai, or purple shell, which gives the print its undertone of restrained classical reference. Hokusai's surimono prints from this series translate refined poetic culture into the rhythms of ordinary Edo-period work, offering urban poets a vision of coastal Sagami filtered through painterly composition. As an Edo ukiyo-e print, the surimono format permits richer color, metallic pigments, and blind embossing that bring the woven texture of nets and the gleam of wet sand into sharper relief. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves these refinements, allowing the labor of Katase fishermen to remain present in Hokusai's small, jewel-like sheet nearly two centuries later.