Yashima, a Warrior Play, from the series "Noh Songs of Gardens (Hanazono yokyoku bantsuzuki)"

This 1821 surimono by Totoya Hokkei, recorded in the Art Institute of Chicago, comes from the series Noh Songs of Gardens (Hanazono yokyoku bantsuzuki) and takes as its subject Yashima, a warrior Noh play set on the famous strait where the Genji defeated the Heike. The play centers on the apparition of the slain general Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who recounts the battle to a traveling priest. Hokkei, a leading pupil of the Hokusai school, designed numerous series in which Noh repertoire provided a learned, archaizing framework for kyoka-e commissions, and Hanazono yokyoku bantsuzuki is one of the most cohesive of these. The series title's reference to a Hanazono (flower garden) group suggests a kyoka club organized under that name, whose members would have inscribed verses on each sheet. Surimono format and printing — heavy hosho paper, deluxe pigments, embossing — allowed Hokkei to render Noh costume and gesture with a precision close to that of the stage. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression places the work within a major institutional collection of Edo surimono, where it can be studied as evidence of how Totoya Hokkei and the Hokusai school adapted the courtly theater of Noh to the literary playfulness of nineteenth-century kyoka-e culture.