Bairei Picture Album of One Hundred Birds (Bairei hyakuchō gafu) 楳嶺百鳥畫譜

Bairei Picture Album of One Hundred Birds (Bairei hyakuchō gafu) 楳嶺百鳥畫譜, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection and dated 1881, preserves the project at its first appearance, when Kono Bairei's serial survey of a hundred Japanese bird species was issued as a complete multi-volume set by the Kyoto publisher Okura Magobei. The Japanese characters in the title — 楳嶺 (Bairei) for the artist's art-name and 百鳥畫譜 (hyakuchō gafu) for one-hundred-birds picture album — anchor the work in the Sino-Japanese tradition of natural-history illustrated books while signaling its public-facing aspirations. Each opening pairs a single species — sparrow, mejiro, kingfisher, hawk, woodpecker, heron — with a sparse seasonal setting of plum, bamboo, pine, or reed, rendered with the brushed ink line and graded color that mark Bairei's Kyoto Shijo school training under Nakajima Raisho and Shiokawa Bunrin. Cut by leading Kyoto block-cutters and printed on absorbent washi, the album mimics brush-on-silk effects rather than the flatter palettes of contemporary Edo ukiyo-e and is bound in the traditional fukurotoji format so that paired pages read as integrated compositions. The Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogues this set within its substantial holdings of Meiji nihonga illustrated books, where Bairei hyakuchō gafu sits at the center of the artist's late-career reputation. For Kono Bairei, the 1881 Met set is the document that announced his Kyoto Shijo school program to the broader Japanese and export markets and that secured his place as the leading bird-and-flower designer of Meiji nihonga.