by Kubo Shunman
Various Spring Flowers belongs to Kubo Shunman's [surimono](/glossary/surimono) series Springtime Plants and Trees for the Kasumi Poetry Circle of the Yomo Group (Yomogawa Kasumi-ren haru no kusaki no uchi), a sequence designed for one of the kyoka clubs that anchored Shunman's career as an Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) artist. The series organizes spring flora into a sequence of carefully composed sheets, each pairing botanical motifs with kyoka by members of the Yomo group's affiliated Kasumi circle. Around 1815, when the series was issued, Shunman had refined his approach to such commissions into a recognizable formula: restrained palette, precise drawing, generous use of negative space, and a layout that respected the inscribed poems as essential collaborators rather than ornamental additions. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves the qualities of high-end surimono printing, with subtle gradations and likely metallic or blind-printed passages that emerge only on close handling. For the kyoka circle, the picture functioned as both seasonal marker and material trophy, evidence of belonging to a community that could underwrite such luxury production. Spring flowers in this context carried compounded associations: with the lunar new year, with the resumption of social life after winter, with the long shelf of classical Japanese poetry devoted to budding plants and birds. As a representative kyoka-e by Kubo Shunman, the sheet shows how botanical observation, literary culture, and refined printcraft converged in the surimono tradition at its zenith.
Meiji Period (1868-1912)
Color woodblock print
1809
Color woodblock print; surimono
19th century
Woodblock print (surimono); ink and color on paper
1797
Woodblock print (surimono); ink and color on paper
Various Spring Flowers, from the series "Springtime Plants and Trees for the Kasumi Poetry Circle of the Yomo Group (Yomogawa Kasumi-ren haru no kusaki no uchi)" was created by Kubo Shunman (窪俊満) in c. 1820.
Various Spring Flowers, from the series "Springtime Plants and Trees for the Kasumi Poetry Circle of the Yomo Group (Yomogawa Kasumi-ren haru no kusaki no uchi)" depicts birds & flowers and spring.
