Seaweed, portable writing case, and plum branch, no. 5 from the series "The Rabbit's Boastful Exploits (Usagi tegarabanashi)"

Number five in the same 1819 series The Rabbit's Boastful Exploits, this [surimono](/glossary/surimono) assembles seaweed, a portable writing case (yatate or related implement), and a branch of plum into a composition whose objects mix the seasonal, the literary, and the everyday. The yatate and the writing implements it contained were themselves the tools of the kyoka poet, and Shinsai's inclusion of the writing case turns the print into a self-reflexive object: the implement that produced the poems sits within the image those poems accompany. The deluxe production typical of Bunsei-era surimono and the Art Institute of Chicago's preservation of the print allow modern viewers to read the design in its full material specificity. As with the rest of the series, the work demonstrates Shinsai's mature command of the still-life surimono at the moment when the format reached its highest pitch of refinement.