Album of Suikoden Portraits with Kyōka Poems (Kyōka suikoden gazōshū) 狂歌水滸伝画像集

The Album of Suikoden Portraits with Kyōka Poems (Kyōka suikoden gazōshū) sets Totoya Hokkei's character studies of the heroes of the Chinese novel Shuihu zhuan (Water Margin) against humorous kyōka verses composed by an Edo poetry group. The Suikoden cycle was enjoying enormous popularity in 1820s Edo, in large part because of the warrior portraits produced by Hokkei's fellow Hokusai school figures and by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and Hokkei here adapts the material to the more intimate, allusive scale of the surimono-illustrated book. Each plate gives a single hero, drawn with the steady linework and inventive costume detail characteristic of Hokkei's mature manner, and pairs the figure with kyōka verses that play on the character's exploits. Edo kyoka-e regularly used Chinese literary heroes to license elaborate visual conceits and erudite punning, and this anthology participates fully in that tradition. The book was issued in small private editions on heavy paper with rich color, embossing, and metallic effects, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the volume as part of its strong representation of Hokkei. Within his career it stands as an example of how thoroughly Hokkei moved between popular ukiyo-e subjects and the more rarefied world of kyōka publication. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.