Visiting the Sanno Shrine

Totoya Hokkei's 1824 surimono Visiting the Sanno Shrine, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, takes as its subject one of Edo's most prominent tutelary cults, centered on the shrine atop the slope of Akasaka. The Sanno Festival was among the city's major sanctioned processions, and visits to the shrine throughout the year provided a steady current of urban devotion and social display that became a favored subject for ukiyo-e and surimono designers. Edo kyoka-e clubs valued such themes, where civic ritual could be filtered through the literary refinements of kyoka verse. Hokkei, a senior pupil of the Hokusai school, drew on Katsushika Hokusai's example of close attention to Edo's religious and social calendar, and the surimono format allowed him to render shrine architecture, costume and accessory with the deluxe techniques characteristic of private printing: thick hosho paper, mica grounds, metallic pigments and karazuri embossing. Kyoka verses inscribed alongside the image would have personalized the design for its original recipients, marking a particular pilgrimage or seasonal observance. Within Totoya Hokkei's body of surimono, the sheet stands as a measured example of how the Hokusai school engaged with Edo's lived religious landscape, transforming a familiar shrine visit into a literary and pictorial object suitable for connoisseurs and poets alike.