It is good to cut one's fingernails (Tsume tori yoshi), from the series "A Series for the Hanazono Group (Hanazono bantsuzuki)"

Totoya Hokkei's surimono "It is good to cut one's fingernails" (Tsume tori yoshi), from the series A Series for the Hanazono Group (Hanazono bantsuzuki), is a wry domestic vignette tied to traditional household lore about which days are auspicious for trimming nails. Such customs were a regular subject of kyōka humor, allowing the Hanazono group of poets to build verses around the small superstitions that structured everyday life. As a Hokusai school designer Hokkei was well suited to this gentle social satire, and the print's small scale and carefully arranged figure or figures reflect his mature surimono manner. The Hanazono bantsuzuki series was a project commissioned by the Hanazono kyōka circle, and like other Edo kyoka-e series of the period it gave its members a chance to combine their poems with images that read both as personal exchanges and as a recognizable group identity. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the sheet within its very strong group of Hokkei surimono. The print sits naturally alongside the other Hanazono bantsuzuki sheets in the collection, where the cumulative effect is a remarkable record of how a single poetry group built a coherent series of surimono around the rhythms of household life. Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.