Ehon kagami hyakushu

Ehon kagami hyakushu, a woodblock-printed book of approximately 1752-1753 (Hōreki 2-3) in the Art Institute of Chicago, is the first-series volume of Nishikawa Suketada's 'Picture Book: Mirror of a Hundred Poems' — one of his most ambitious early publications as the new head of the Nishikawa workshop following his father Nishikawa Sukenobu's death in 1750. The title's central conceit is the kagami, the mirror: each of the hundred poems of the classical Hyakunin isshu anthology is to be reflected by, and reflected in, an accompanying figural composition. Suketada follows the visual conventions established by his father across more than a hundred Kyoto ehon — a supple monochrome line, a refined seasonal sensibility, an unhurried compositional rhythm that allows the printed page to function as both object of contemplation and literary aid. The figures across the volume's openings are contemporary mid-eighteenth-century Kyoto women, the same urban-elegant types his father had defined, here mobilized in the service of a canonical literary project. The Art Institute holds this volume in good condition, making it a primary research source for the Hōreki-era Kamigata ehon tradition.