Geisha looking up at a cuckoo, from the series "Five Annual Festivals for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushika gosekku)"

Also from the 1822 Five Annual Festivals for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushika gosekku) series, this surimono by Katsushika Taito II depicts a geisha pausing to look upward at a hototogisu—the lesser cuckoo, whose first call was a celebrated marker of early summer in classical Japanese poetry. Hototogisu themes appear constantly in waka and kyoka literature, and the print's pairing of the bird with a stylish urban figure is exactly the kind of association the Katsushika kyoka circle prized. Held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the sheet preserves the shikishiban surimono format's near-square dimensions and the careful printing that distinguished privately commissioned poetry prints from commercial ukiyo-e. Taito II positions the geisha in three-quarter view, her head tilted back to follow the cuckoo's flight, with her trailing obi and patterned kimono forming the bulk of the visual interest. The figure's drawing follows the broad-shouldered Hokusai-school manner, while the poetic moment captured—an evening of summer with a bird call overhead—anchors the print firmly in the conventions of seasonal kyoka.