A View of Takanawa

This Art Institute of Chicago surimono presents a view of Takanawa, the cliff-side district at the southwestern edge of Edo where the Tokaido road met the city and where travelers paused to take in the sweeping view across the bay toward Shinagawa and beyond. Takanawa was a celebrated meisho - a famous place - and its view appeared frequently in commercial prints; the surimono treatment of the subject by Hokkei would have engaged kyoka poets familiar with both the topography and the literary lineage of meisho imagery. Hokkei compresses the view into the small shikishiban format, probably featuring a portion of the cliff, a stretch of bay, perhaps boats on the water and travelers on the road - the kind of compositional shorthand at which surimono designers excelled. The inscribed kyoka verses would have engaged the geography and its associations with travel, departure, or the auspicious sunrise that often illuminates the Takanawa view in classical descriptions. The Art Institute's impression preserves the refined printing and saturated color that distinguish surimono from contemporary commercial landscape prints of the same Edo subjects.