New Year Greeting Card for "Rat" Year

A surimono of 1828 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection, this print was produced as a New Year greeting card for the year of the rat — the first sign of the twelve-year zodiac cycle, which fell in 1828 (Bunsei 11) within the dates of Shigenobu's career. New Year surimono were the format's commercial heart: kyōka clubs and individual patrons commissioned them as season-specific gifts to be circulated among friends and fellow poets in the early days of the lunar new year, and zodiac-animal motifs supplied the standard iconographic anchor. The rat (ne, the first of the twelve) carried particularly auspicious associations as the sign that opened each new twelve-year cycle, and rat-year surimono were correspondingly popular commissions. The image and verse together served as a private literary-pictorial greeting whose lavish printing — fine paper, embossing, metallic pigment — embodied the patron's good wishes. The 1828 date places this rat-year card in Shigenobu's late production; the design is one of multiple zodiac-themed surimono in his output of the decade.