Green Plums Wrapped in Bamboo Leaf; A Teabowl

Green Plums Wrapped in Bamboo Leaf; A Teabowl is a still-life surimono by Totoya Hokkei, a Hokusai school designer of privately commissioned prints in early nineteenth-century Edo. The composition presents two simple objects associated with the early summer table: a parcel of green plums wrapped in a large bamboo leaf, the unripe fruits visible at the partly opened end, and a teabowl placed beside them. Hokkei treats the still-life with the restraint typical of his finest work, isolating the two objects against an empty ground so that the texture of the leaf, the small spheres of the plums, and the smooth volume of the bowl read clearly. Green plums (aoume) appear in early summer just before the rainy season and were used for preserves and the famous plum wine (umeshu), while the bamboo leaf was a common natural wrapper for foodstuffs because of its mild antibacterial properties. Pairing the plums with a teabowl evokes the rhythms of the seasonal kitchen, suggesting both the simple pleasure of a summer drink and the quiet ritual of preparing it. As a surimono the sheet would have been commissioned by a kyoka poetry circle, the accompanying verses turning on themes of unripeness, anticipation, or the season's first taste, and would have been printed in a small edition with metallic pigments and karazuri blind embossing for the leaf veins and bowl. Hokkei studied with Katsushika Hokusai and was among the most respected still-life designers of the Hokusai school. The print is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it joins other Hokkei still-lifes that demonstrate how the surimono format made seasonal kitchen objects into refined emblems of Edo cultivated life.