Carp

Carp is a Katsushika Taito II color woodblock print dated approximately 1830-44 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The image is one section of a harimaze sheet, the popular nineteenth-century format in which a single oban page combined multiple small scenes that buyers could cut apart and paste into albums. Taito II treats the carp (koi) in the Hokusai-school manner: a strongly outlined, muscular form with carefully patterned scales, set against suggested water movement rather than a fully developed landscape. Carp held strong symbolic associations in Japanese visual culture, standing for perseverance, vitality, and—through the legend of the carp ascending the Dragon Gate waterfall to become a dragon—success against adversity. The harimaze format made such symbolically resonant images affordable to a wide audience: even buyers who could not commission luxury surimono could acquire small kacho-ga images of carp, cranes, and similar emblems through these multi-image sheets, and Taito II contributed to the format regularly through the 1830s and 1840s.