New Year’s Sake

Identified at the Art Institute of Chicago as a c. 1810-20 design surviving in a Meiji-era facsimile, this surimono shikishiban depicts the ceremonial otoso, the spiced sake drunk at New Year, presented in formal lacquerware. New Year's greetings were the original purpose of the surimono format, and a print celebrating the season's central beverage would have circulated among Gakutei's kyoka colleagues as both a votive image and a vehicle for seasonal verse. The composition employs metallic pigments in gold and silver to evoke the gleam of lacquer and the shimmer of sake, a technical signature of the Hokusai-school surimono tradition that Gakutei pushed to its highest refinement. Although the surviving impression is a later facsimile reissued during the Meiji period, when collectors and publishers reproduced classic surimono for the export and connoisseur markets, the design preserves the iconographic and compositional choices of Gakutei's original. The Art Institute's record of the impression provides a documented provenance and a reference point for distinguishing original early-nineteenth-century printings from later Meiji reproductions.