Samurai Admiring Pine-Tree and Plum Blossoms

Samurai Admiring Pine-Tree and Plum Blossoms is a surimono by Ryuryukyo Shinsai in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Working in the Hokusai school as a pupil of Katsushika Hokusai, Shinsai contributed many surimono designs that paired figures with seasonal motifs. In this composition a samurai stands or pauses in contemplation before a pine tree and blossoming plum, the two emblems most strongly associated with the New Year and with the symbolic theme of perseverance through winter. The pine, evergreen and long-lived, stands for endurance; the plum, the first tree to flower while snow still lingers, signals renewal and resilience. These two subjects, paired in countless poems and paintings, here become the focus of quiet reflection for the warrior in the foreground. Shinsai's treatment of the figure is restrained, his armor or formal dress sketched in with the clean lines characteristic of Hokusai-school figure work, while the pine and plum unfurl around him with careful botanical detail. The print would have employed the lavish techniques typical of surimono, including embossed blindprinting (karazuri) in the warrior's robes, fine color gradations in the petals, and selective metallic pigments. Surimono of this kind, privately commissioned by kyoka poetry circles for distribution at the New Year, frequently celebrated the union of martial virtue with refined poetic sensibility, the bun-bu ideal of cultivated warriorhood. Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/54828.