Ehon Mitsuwagusa

Ehon Mitsuwagusa, a woodblock-printed book dated 1758 (Hōreki 8) in the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of Nishikawa Suketada's last published works and stands as a key dated example of his late style. Published in the year recorded as Suketada's death, the book represents the closing point of the direct Nishikawa workshop tradition that ran from his father Sukenobu's debut in the 1710s through his own activity in the 1750s. The title — variously read as 'Picture Book of Three-Ring Grasses' or in similar lyric registers — invokes the same kind of botanical seasonal imagery his father had used as the framework for ehon publications throughout his career. The 1758 date is significant in the longer history of Japanese print: it falls only seven years before Suzuki Harunobu's invention of polychrome [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) in Edo in 1765, the technical breakthrough that would shift the center of the Japanese print market decisively from Kamigata to Edo. Mitsuwagusa thus captures the Kyoto [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) tradition at a moment when its commercial dominance was still intact but already under pressure. The Art Institute's copy is an important late-Nishikawa document.