Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 2: Cut Flowers: Clematis, Bush Clover, Iris, Camellia, and Azalea

Cut Flowers: Clematis, Bush Clover, Iris, Camellia, and Azalea appears in Kubo Shunman's Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shu), volume 2, one of the surimono albums in which his designs found a particularly congenial home. Dated around 1815 and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the print is a botanical anthology in miniature, gathering five flowering plants of distinct seasonal and poetic resonance and arranging them as cut sprays. Each plant carries its own associations in the Japanese poetic tradition: clematis (tessen), bush clover (hagi) tied to autumn and tender feeling, iris (ayame or kakitsubata) bound to the Tales of Ise's famous wordplay, camellia (tsubaki) with its hardier winter sensibility, and azalea (tsutsuji) signaling the cusp of spring and summer. By assembling them in a single composition, Shunman gives the kyoka poets responsible for the accompanying verses a rich vocabulary to play with. The drawing is precise, the colors muted, and the composition arranged so that each plant maintains its identity without competing with the others. This kind of layered botanical surimono is one of the most distinctive products of refined Edo ukiyo-e, and Kubo Shunman's contributions to the Harusame shu helped define the genre. The album context matters as well, since the gathering of prints by multiple poets and designers around a common theme was central to the social fabric of the kyoka world.