Cuckoo Flying over Deutzia Flowers

Held in the Clarence Buckingham Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (accession 1952.357), Cuckoo Flying over Deutzia Flowers is a [chuban](/glossary/chuban) color woodblock print measuring 25.8 by 19.7 centimeters and dated to circa 1766. The subject is a quintessential early-summer [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) (bird-and-flower picture): the hototogisu (cuckoo, a key seasonal bird of Japanese poetic tradition signifying the arrival of early summer) winging through a spray of unohana (deutzia flowers, the white-flowered shrub of the same season). The pairing was a classical waka and haikai topos with centuries of poetic association behind it, and its appearance in Hyakki's print of 1766 demonstrates the way the early [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) generation drew on the deep iconographic traditions of Japanese seasonal poetry to supply subjects suited to the new chromatic precision of multi-block color printing.