Court Lady

Court Lady is a surimono by Totoya Hokkei, a printmaker trained in the Hokusai school and a leading designer of privately commissioned prints in early nineteenth-century Edo. The figure is shown in the dress of a Heian period noblewoman, wearing the multiple layered robes of the junihitoe and her hair flowing long down her back. Hokkei treats the costume as the principal subject, layering colored garments and patterned outer robes that fan out around the seated or standing figure, while the face is rendered with the restrained features and high painted brows of classical court convention. Such depictions of Heian aristocratic women were common in kyoka surimono, especially within series alluding to The Tale of Genji, the Hyakunin Isshu collection of one hundred poems, or other waka anthologies that formed the literary backbone of poetry-club culture in Edo. The image would have accompanied verses inscribed alongside it, the contrast between the courtly subject and the witty modern voice of the kyoka providing much of its appeal. As a surimono, the sheet was produced in a small private edition on thick hosho paper, with elaborate techniques such as karazuri blind embossing on robe patterns and metallic pigment on textile gold. Hokkei studied with Katsushika Hokusai and developed a particularly elegant figural manner suited to such allusive subjects, with controlled outlines and confident pattern design. The print is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it illustrates the Hokusai school's continued engagement with classical Japanese literary culture and the role of surimono in keeping that imagery vivid for the educated townspeople of nineteenth-century Edo.