Water: Zhang Shun (Mizu, Chojun), from the series "The Five Elements of The Water Margin (Suiko gogyo)"

Totoya Hokkei composed this surimono around 1830 as part of his series "The Five Elements of The Water Margin (Suiko gogyo)," pairing five heroes of the Chinese novel Shuihuzhuan (in Japanese, Suikoden) with the five elements of traditional Chinese cosmology. This sheet depicts Zhang Shun (in Japanese, Chojun) corresponding to the element Water (Mizu). Zhang Shun was nicknamed "White Streak in the Waves" in the novel, an extraordinary swimmer whose underwater feats made him one of the most picturesque of the Liangshan outlaws. The pairing of his character with the element Water was therefore especially apt. Hokkei renders the hero with the dramatic figural concentration characteristic of the Hokusai school, capturing his fluid, aqueous nature through pose and composition. The Suikoden boom in early nineteenth-century Japan, sparked by translations and by his teacher Katsushika Hokusai's own illustrations, transformed these Chinese outlaw figures into popular icons of Edo print culture. As a senior pupil of Hokusai, Totoya Hokkei specialized in surimono throughout his career. These privately commissioned deluxe prints were used by kyoka poetry clubs to mark seasonal occasions, combining striking imagery with kyoka comic verses on heavy paper enriched with metallic pigments and embossing. The conceptual sophistication of pairing literary heroes with cosmological elements exemplifies the erudition that surimono cultivated. The Art Institute of Chicago, which preserves this impression, holds substantial strength in early nineteenth-century Japanese surimono. The technical refinements visible in the work, the careful figure drawing, the embossed surfaces, and the metallic pigments, all reflect the heightened production standards characteristic of the surimono tradition.