Two Women Playing Shuttlecock

Two Women Playing Shuttlecock is a shikishiban diptych surimono by Katsushika Taito II, dated 1810-53 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The print captures two young women engaged in hanetsuki, the traditional New Year game played with a wooden paddle (hagoita) and a small feathered shuttlecock. As a New Year subject, the image belongs squarely in the surimono tradition: kyoka poetry groups commissioned such prints to mark the turn of the year and circulated them privately among members. Taito II treats the figures with the broad-shouldered, taut linear drawing characteristic of the Hokusai school, balancing the two women across the diptych so that the shuttlecock's implied arc carries the eye between the sheets. The shikishiban format, near-square at roughly 21 by 18 centimeters per panel, was the standard luxury size for surimono and allowed printers to lavish attention on color gradation, metallic pigments, and blind embossing in the figures' kimono patterns. The Art Institute's example preserves these printing refinements clearly, making it a useful reference for the high level of craft that distinguished surimono from ordinary commercial woodblock prints of the early nineteenth century.