Ladies Playing Instruments

This color woodblock print ([nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e)), held by the Art Institute of Chicago (reference 81313, gift of Helen C. Gunsaulus), is a long horizontal [surimono](/glossary/surimono) showing ladies playing musical instruments, dated by the museum to the early nineteenth century. The sheet, at 19.3 by 51.5 cm, is in the elongated horizontal format characteristic of high-end surimono — privately commissioned, lavishly printed sheets produced for poetry circles and other late-Edo cultural clubs. Surimono were not part of the standard commercial print market: they were printed in small editions, often paid for by the host of a poetry gathering or by a club secretary, and they deployed the full repertoire of expensive printing techniques — embossing ([karazuri](/glossary/karazuri)), metallic and pearlescent pigments, mica grounds (kira-zuri), and exceptionally fine block-cutting — in service of an intended audience of connoisseurs. Subjects often combined a seasonal or musical theme with kyoka (comic verse) printed across the surface. Kuniyasu was one of the prolific surimono designers of the Bunsei era, and this elongated composition of women with musical instruments is a representative example of the genre's blend of [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) elegance and decorative refinement. The print entered the Art Institute through Helen C. Gunsaulus, the museum's longtime curator of Asian art and one of the founding figures of American scholarship on Japanese prints.