Ehon kokinran

Ehon kokinran is a Suzuki Harunobu illustrated book in the Art Institute of Chicago (artwork 231113). The title, which can be read as something like "picture book of ancient and modern brocades," identifies the volume as part of a recognizable category of mid-eighteenth-century Edo publishing: an anthology of illustrated motifs, often drawn from classical poetry, contemporary genre, and seasonal subjects, in which a leading designer's images are framed for the book trade rather than for the single-sheet print market. Harunobu's work in the ehon format extended the visual language of his nishiki-e single sheets to the printed book. Slender, idealized women, drawn after the type he had refined in his Edo bijin-ga, appear on book leaves together with poetic references, seasonal motifs, and small narrative incidents, and the polychrome resources that defined his contribution to ukiyo-e are deployed at the more intimate scale of the bound page. Even where the printing is restrained relative to the most lavish single-sheet works, the books were prized objects in their own right and helped to disseminate his idealized images of Edo women to an audience that might never have purchased a deluxe print. The Art Institute of Chicago's record at artic.edu under artwork 231113 catalogues the volume as Ehon kokinran by Suzuki Harunobu, an example of his contribution to Edo illustrated publishing.