Peacock on Pine Tree and Peonies, from the series Three Sheets (Mihira no uchi)

Totoya Hokkei designed this surimono as one part of a triptych-style set called Three Sheets (Mihira no uchi), bringing together emblems of long life and worldly splendor. A peacock perches on a pine bough while peonies bloom below, three motifs traditionally associated with imperial dignity, evergreen permanence, and the wealth of the floral world. The Hokusai school taste for crisply outlined birds and plants is at work here, but the print has the saturated color, careful embossing, and silvery accents typical of the finest Edo kyoka-e surimono. Hokkei's facility with bird-and-flower (kachō-e) compositions made him a natural choice for poetry groups looking to commission New Year prints, and the choice of peacock with peonies suggests a commission from a kyōka circle interested in Chinese-style auspicious imagery. The original sheet would have carried one or more kyōka verses arrayed across the upper register, each composed by a member of the commissioning group; the printed image and verse together formed a single gift exchanged in the early days of the year. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds this impression as part of its substantial collection of Hokkei surimono, where it sits within a broader account of how privately printed kyōka books and sheets transformed the high end of the woodblock market in the 1810s and 1820s. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.