Poetic Travel

Dated to the first month of 1883, this color woodblock surimono carries the title "Poetic Travel" and was almost certainly issued for the New Year by a kyoka poetry club. Travel - whether literal, imagined, or literary - was a recurring theme in kyoka verse, often pairing humorous treatments of contemporary roads, post stations, and pilgrimages with allusions to classical poetry. Zeshin's surimono illustrations frequently work by suggestion rather than narrative, evoking a journey through a single emblematic object: a pilgrim's hat, a straw raincoat, a folded map, or a piece of travel equipment. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues this sheet to the first month of 1883, the season when New Year surimono dominated club commissions. Working in his late seventies, Zeshin remained the favored illustrator for many of these gatherings, his shorthand brush manner and his block-cutters' precision producing sheets that read as graphic counterparts to the kyoka verse arranged across the upper register.