Three Kabuki Actors Playing Hanetsuki

This surimono triptych of woodblock prints, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 2001.715.4a-c) and dated to circa 1823, depicts three kabuki actors playing hanetsuki, the traditional New Year's battledore-and-shuttlecock game in which paddles (hagoita) are used to keep a feathered shuttlecock aloft. The triptych comprises three sheets of approximately 18.4 by 21.3 cm each and is executed in the refined surimono idiom — ink and color on paper enhanced with the elaborate decorative techniques (embossing, metallic and mica printing, exceptionally fine block-cutting) that distinguished privately commissioned sheets from the standard commercial nishiki-e market. Hanetsuki was a customary New Year's pastime particularly associated with women and children, and surimono depicting the game were standard New Year greetings issued by poetry circles to their members. By replacing the conventional female and child players with three kabuki actors, Kuniyasu produces a witty mitate (visual parody) that combines the seasonal subject with theatrical celebrity portraiture, characteristic of his interest in the crossover between bijin-ga, yakusha-e, and ningyo-puppet subjects. The triptych is an excellent example of Kuniyasu's mature surimono practice and a representative document of the early-Bunsei (1820s) print market's elaborate cultivation of privately printed New Year sheets among poetry-club connoisseurs in Edo.