Ama no Uzume, No. 3 (Sono san) from the series "The Boulder Door of Spring (Haru no iwato)"

The third sheet in Totoya Hokkei's surimono series The Boulder Door of Spring (Haru no iwato), dated 1820 by the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts Ama no Uzume, the goddess whose ecstatic dance lured Amaterasu from the cave in which she had hidden. As Sono san, or No. 3, the print follows the drummer and Sarutahiko within the cycle, completing a Shinto tableau that Edo kyoka-e patrons would have read as both mythological and seasonal. Hokkei, a senior pupil of the Hokusai school, was among the most prolific surimono designers of his generation, and his treatment of Uzume reflects the Hokusai workshop's appetite for narrative subjects refined to the demands of the small shikishiban sheet. The Boulder Door myth, central to early Japanese cosmology, was a natural choice for a New Year-related kyoka club commission, since the goddess's return from the cave evoked the sun's return at the new season. Verses by club members would have shared the surface with the image, and the deluxe printing characteristic of surimono — mica, gold and silver pigments, embossing — would have lent the goddess's costume and dance posture a richly tactile presence. The sheet stands as a representative example of how Totoya Hokkei and the Hokusai school adapted classical Japanese myth to the literary and material refinements of the surimono medium.