Narihira at the Nunobiki Waterfall, from the Episode 87 of Tales of Ise

This Art Institute of Chicago surimono illustrates Episode 87 of the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari), in which Ariwara no Narihira - the legendary tenth-century poet and lover whose adventures structure the Tales - visits the Nunobiki waterfall in Settsu province. The episode is one of the more celebrated passages in the cycle, combining Narihira's characteristic poetic sensibility with the dramatic natural setting of the waterfall, whose name (nunobiki, 'cloth-drawing') compares the cascading water to unfurled cloth. The subject was ideal for surimono because Tales of Ise occupied a central place in the kyoka poets' classical canon - their kyoka verses were often written in conscious dialogue with the Ise tradition, and a Narihira episode in print form would have invited the inscribed verses to enter that ongoing dialogue. Hokkei renders Narihira with the refined courtly elegance traditional to his iconography, against a stylized vertical waterfall that fills the shikishiban format. The Art Institute's impression preserves the refined printing characteristic of Hokkei's literary-classical subjects, in which the depth of cultural reference matched the technical refinement of the printing.