Picture Book of Komatsubara (Ehon komatsubara) 絵本小松原

Picture Book of Komatsubara (Ehon komatsubara), a woodblock-printed book dated 1761 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a posthumous edition — published eleven years after Sukenobu's death — that closely parallels the Art Institute of Chicago's 1761 copy of the same title. Komatsubara, the small pine field, was a place name and a seasonal motif associated with the early-spring outings depicted in classical waka poetry. The Met and Art Institute copies, both from the 1761 edition, are valuable as paired survivors of a single posthumous printing run; their joint survival illustrates how Sukenobu's blocks were being actively maintained and reissued by Kyoto and Osaka publishers in the 1760s, even as Edo printmaking was about to be transformed by Suzuki Harunobu's polychrome [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) in 1765. The continued vitality of the Sukenobu market more than a decade after his death is one of the most telling indicators of his cultural reach. Few other Japanese print artists of any period retained such a strong commercial presence so long after their death, and the existence of substantial 1761 editions in two major American collections testifies to that durability.