Picture Book: Thousand-Year Mountain? (Ehon Chitoseyama? 絵本千年山?

Picture Book: Thousand-Year Mountain (Ehon Chitoseyama), a woodblock print on paper dated 1740 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, takes its title from the auspicious imagery of chitose, 'thousand years,' linked to the symbolic landscape of a mountain associated with longevity. Sukenobu's ehon titles repeatedly draw on this kind of celebratory and long-life imagery, framing his depictions of women within a symbolic vocabulary of permanence and continuity. The 1740 date places the book in the middle of the Genbun era, between the productive landmarks of Ehon Asakayama (1739) and the late masterworks of the late 1740s. The Met's copy is rendered in monochrome ink, with no hand coloring, in the spare line style that defines Sukenobu's mature page work. The question mark in the museum's reading of the title — Ehon Chitoseyama? — reflects the ambiguity that often accompanies attribution of undated or partially-titled Sukenobu pages; many of his ehon survive without complete colophons, and their identification depends on cross-reference to known editions and on the analysis of the figural style itself.