Woman and box of poem cards

In Woman and Box of Poem Cards, Totoya Hokkei brings together two of the staples of his surimono practice: an elegant female figure and a literary game associated with the New Year. The box would have held the cards used in karuta, the matching game built around the Hyakunin isshu anthology of one hundred classical poems, and the woman is shown either selecting or contemplating a card with the slightly self-conscious composure that surimono figures often adopt. Hokkei was by this date one of the most accomplished Hokusai school designers of surimono, and the print uses the conventions of Edo kyoka-e — refined paper, restrained but carefully tuned color, embossed details, and metallic pigments — to elevate what would otherwise be a simple genre subject. The image is also a sly literary joke, because surimono themselves accompanied kyōka verses that parodied the classical poems of the karuta deck, so the picture and its likely original poems would have conducted a sustained conversation about high and low forms of Japanese verse. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds the sheet within its broader Hokkei holdings, where it joins a coherent body of surimono in which female figures, literary games, and New Year imagery cluster together. Image courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.