Court lady sitting beside hanging incense burner

In this surimono by Totoya Hokkei, dated 1820 in the Art Institute of Chicago's catalogue, a court lady is shown beside a hanging incense burner, a refined evocation of Heian aristocratic culture as remembered in Edo's literary imagination. Such themes were favored in the Edo kyoka-e circles that supported the surimono market, where commissioning poets and connoisseurs prized images that gave their kyoka verses a classical setting. Hokkei, trained in the Hokusai school as one of Katsushika Hokusai's most prolific pupils, brought to these designs a precise, slightly archaizing figural style suited to the small shikishiban format. The hanging incense burner (tsuri-koro) is itself a marker of courtly taste, often associated with the world of Genji-monogatari and other classical sources, and its inclusion frames the woman as a participant in an idealized past. Surimono were privately printed in small editions on thick paper, with embossing, mica and metallic pigments often deployed sparingly but tellingly on objects such as lacquerware and silken garments. As a Hokusai-school surimono designer working at the height of the Edo kyoka-e movement, Hokkei here demonstrates how a single seated figure, with its sumptuous attire and refined accessories, could carry the literary atmosphere required of poetry-club commissions, anchoring the verses while delighting the eye.