Yu the Great battling a dragon

This surimono by Totoya Hokkei, dated around 1826, depicts the legendary Chinese ruler Yu the Great battling a dragon. Yu, the founder of the Xia dynasty and one of the great culture heroes of Chinese antiquity, was celebrated for his nine-year campaign to control the great floods that ravaged ancient China. According to tradition, he tamed rivers and subdued the supernatural creatures associated with floods, including dragons. Hokkei renders the heroic confrontation with the dramatic energy and concentrated composition characteristic of the Hokusai school, the muscular figure of Yu engaged in physical struggle with the writhing serpent. The print exemplifies how artists of the Hokusai school adapted Chinese legendary subjects for an Edo audience steeped in cosmopolitan literary culture. As a leading pupil of Katsushika Hokusai and a senior member of the Hokusai school, Totoya Hokkei specialized in surimono, the privately commissioned deluxe prints used by kyoka poetry clubs to mark seasonal occasions and special events. These prints combined striking imagery with kyoka comic verses on heavy paper enriched with metallic pigments and elaborate embossing. By the mid-1820s, Hokkei had become one of the most prolific and accomplished surimono designers, and his treatment of heroic subjects from Chinese legend reflects the broad reach of the surimono tradition. The Art Institute of Chicago, which preserves this impression, maintains substantial holdings of nineteenth-century Japanese prints. The technical refinements characteristic of surimono are visible here: the careful color registration, the embossed scales of the dragon, the metallic pigments that catch the light, and the heavy paper substrate that gave the prints their distinctive substantial feel.