Cocks and Hens

Cocks and Hens is a surimono print by Ryuryukyo Shinsai in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dated to about 1801. The composition presents a group of domestic chickens, a subject with long roots in Chinese-influenced bird-and-flower painting and one that fits naturally within the Hokusai school's broad interest in poultry, birds, and barnyard genre. The cocks and hens are arranged so that the eye moves from the proud carriage of the rooster to the watchful postures of the hens, suggesting a small social drama within a single sheet. Shinsai, who first studied with Tawaraya Sori and then took his place among Hokusai's followers, brought to such subjects a careful sense of weight and movement: feathers are described with clean parallel lines, combs and wattles take their saturated color from a limited surimono palette, and feet are placed with the precision typical of Hokusai school draftsmanship. Surimono printing techniques such as blind embossing and metallic pigments often deepened the textures of plumage in works like this, and an early nineteenth-century impression would have read more luminously than commercial bird prints of the same years. As a sheet commissioned by a kyoka poetry club, it would have invited verses on themes of vigilance, household life, or the first crow of dawn marking the new year. The print stands as a fine example of how Shinsai extended the Hokusai school's animal repertoire into the luxury surimono format.