The Studio, illustration for The White Shell (Shiragai), from the series "A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells (Genroku kasen kai awase)"

The Studio, illustration for The White Shell (Shiragai) from the Katsushika Hokusai series A Matching Game with Genroku-period Poem Shells (Genroku kasen kai awase), is an Edo ukiyo-e print of 1816 in the Art Institute of Chicago. The series matches each shell with a small genre scene tuned to the literary culture of the poetry circles that commissioned the surimono. For shiragai, the white shell, Hokusai turns his attention inward to an artist's studio, with figures absorbed in the slow business of drawing, copying and grinding pigment. As a self-aware nod from Hokusai to the practice of art-making, the print is unusual within the series, and it offers a small but valuable look at how he wanted the work of his own profession to appear in popular imagery. The interior is composed with the diagonals and compact furniture that would later structure his book illustrations. As an Edo ukiyo-e print produced for a private poetry circle, the sheet uses careful color and embossing rather than the bright effects of commercial single-sheet work. For collectors and historians, it is one of the more telling images in Hokusai's surimono output, both for its content and for its compositional restraint. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the print.