Collected Thirty-six Kyōka Poets (Kyōka roku roku shū) 興歌六々集

Collected Thirty-six Kyōka Poets (Kyōka roku roku shū) brings together verses by thirty-six members of an Edo kyōka group with illustrations designed by Totoya Hokkei. The conceit of "thirty-six poets" is a deliberate parody of the classical anthology of the Thirty-six Immortal Poets, a touchstone of waka tradition, recast here as a roster of contemporary kyōka enthusiasts working in the humorous, often colloquial thirty-one-syllable form. Hokkei, by this date long established as one of the most sought-after illustrators in the Hokusai school of surimono, supplies portraits and vignettes that play off the personalities and pen-names of each poet. The book typifies the late phase of Edo kyoka-e, when poetry circles continued to commission lavish private editions even as the broader market for surimono contracted. Production values remain high: heavy paper, embossing, and metallic pigments, with the same crisp linework that had defined Hokkei's surimono since the 1810s. Held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the anthology is significant both as a record of an extended literary network around 1840 and as testimony to Hokkei's continued role at the center of Edo's privately printed book culture. It also helps document how the Hokusai school's influence on kyōka illustration outlasted Hokusai himself. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.