A Woman Pulling the Cord of a Wheeled Book Case, from the series "A Set of Seven for the Katsushika Club"

In this [surimono](/glossary/surimono) [shikishiban](/glossary/shikishiban) from the Set of Seven for the Katsushika Club, a woman draws on the cord of a wheeled book case, a piece of literary furniture used to roll volumes from room to room or to transport an entire library between residences. Dated to around 1825 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the print continues the series' meditation on the material culture of female literacy, with each design centering on an object that mediates a woman's engagement with text. The composition's careful study of the book case, its wheeled base, and the cord's tension demonstrates Gakutei's interest in objects as bearers of cultural meaning, while the metallic pigments characteristic of the Katsushikaren commissions catch the light across the woman's robes and the case's wooden surfaces. The image carries an obvious self-referential charge for a poetry circle commissioning surimono prints, since the wheeled case is precisely the kind of vehicle in which volumes of kyoka verse and surimono albums would have been stored.