Illustrated Japanese Culture
摺物
Surimono are privately commissioned Japanese woodblock prints, often combining pictures and poetry. Poetry-circle members, patrons, actors and supporters commissioned sheets to exchange with selected recipients, including for New Year greetings and commemorations.
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Commissioned for a particular circleA poetry teacher or patron could commission a professional artist to combine imagery with selected verses. Copies then circulated among members, patrons and friends. Actors and their admirers also commissioned surimono to mark roles, events or relations with supporters. These were several ways to organize a private print.
1Carve away the surrounding wood
2Brush pigment onto the relief
3Place the paper in register
4Rub the back of the paperThe artist’s design passed through woodblock production and printing. Specialist studios could print designs by other artists, and some sheets name a printer or producer as well as a designer. The finished object can therefore record collaboration among people with different responsibilities.
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Kyōka, a common form on surimono, uses the 5–7–5–7–7 pattern of Japanese sound units associated with waka poetry, with room for humor and verbal play. Haiku also appears on some surimono.
An Ashmolean Museum example from around the 1820s links a full tobacco pouch with haru, a word that can suggest spring or fullness. The wordplay connects the pictured object to a New Year wish. Surimono subjects also include still lifes, actors, landscapes and historical or legendary scenes.
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Blind embossing creates relief
Metallic pigment changes reflectionThick hōsho paper supported special effects. Blind embossing, or karazuri, presses an uninked block into the paper to create relief. Burnishing produces glossy areas, while metallic pigments add reflective details.
Some effects appear more clearly as a sheet moves in the light. A static digital photograph can flatten relief or fail to show a change in reflection.
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Surimono literally means printed matter. In this art-historical context, it identifies privately sponsored woodblock sheets made for chosen recipients. Besides New Year gifts and poetry exchanges, commissions could announce music or entertainment events, or provide mementoes for friends and clients. Such distribution could have a promotional purpose while differing from ordinary print retail.
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about 20.5 × 18.5 cm
12.6 × 17.3 cm
The approximately square shikishiban format measures about 20.5 by 18.5 centimeters. Poetry and design share a single visible surface. Other dimensions occur: the Ashmolean’s tobacco-pouch example measures only 12.6 by 17.3 centimeters.
A long horizontal format could use a sheet of about 40 by 53 centimeters, folded lengthwise. The picture appeared outside and the text inside, allowing a program or larger group of poems to be read after unfolding.
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Surimono subjects include objects, birds and flowers, zodiac animals, actors, landscapes and figures from legends or literature. Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎), an Edo-period ukiyo-e designer, and pupils such as Hokkei and Gakutei worked in the genre. The pictured subject could participate in the poem’s allusion or wordplay.
In nunome-zuri, a textile attached to a block supplies a texture impressed into the sheet. Metallic pigments could include brass; a gold-colored reflection alone does not establish the use of gold. These effects were options to identify on an individual print.
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The Edo calendar contained months of thirty and twenty-nine days, with a changing annual arrangement. Illustrated calendars encoded that information in the picture. Private exchanges in the 1760s brought patrons, designers, block cutters and printers together to produce increasingly elaborate sheets.
Suzuki Harunobu (鈴木春信, about 1725–1770), an Edo-period ukiyo-e designer, participated in calendar-print production. Fukagawa Edo Museum connects this activity with the development of full-color woodblock printing. Multicolor prints then circulated commercially as nishiki-e, or brocade prints. Shared techniques linked the private commission with the wider retail market.
JAANUS describes privately sponsored surimono as less constrained by restrictions on extravagance than prints sold to the public. Patrons could choose thick paper, unusual formats and elaborate techniques. This concerns a particular historical regulatory setting, rather than freedom from every form of censorship.
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The Ashmolean traces commissions from kyōka poets to artists from the 1780s. By the early nineteenth century, characteristic surimono brought image and poems into a jointly conceived composition. Private exchange gave the verses, the chosen picture and the intended recipients a shared setting.
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Kubo Shunman (窪俊満), an Edo-period artist, designed the 1796 print Courtier and Lady with a Young Woman Poling a Boat. The Metropolitan Museum identifies an allusion to the Ukifune chapter of The Tale of Genji. Its poems are New Year greetings, rather than direct retellings of that episode. Image and text can therefore refer to different subjects while participating in the same exchange.
The Met’s interpretation links a phrase about plum fragrance with Niou, the courtier in the story: niou, “to be fragrant,” sounds like his name. A small verbal link can connect a New Year poem with the literary scene.
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Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞), an Edo-period print designer, made surimono associated with kabuki actors and their supporters. The Fitzwilliam Museum dates his active production from the late 1810s to the mid-1830s and links its interruption to an economic crisis.
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The vogue for kyōka in Edo declined in the 1830s, while surimono carrying haiku continued into the middle of the nineteenth century.
The British Museum records an 1891 surimono showing a decorated ball and toy rabbit. The Rijksmuseum holds a late-Meiji copy of an earlier Noh-mask design, dated around 1890–1900. These objects document both later production and the copying of older designs.
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An Osaka surimono album was given to Raphael Pumpelly, an American geologist traveling in Japan, in 1863. Eighty-eight sheets from that album entered RISD Museum in 1956.
The Rijksmuseum’s collection grew through a 1958 bequest of 328 surimono; its 2013 catalogue later supplied online entries. Reproduction followed another path: Mokuhankan’s Crow on Shrine Gate is printed from blocks recut in 1998. Museum cataloguing studies surviving sheets, while new blocks produce later impressions.
A patron, poetry group or actor could commission a design, which block cutters and printers helped produce. Copies were given to chosen members, supporters and friends rather than distributed as ordinary retail prints.
A verbal association can join them. In Shunman’s 1796 print, New Year verses accompany a scene linked to The Tale of Genji; a reference to plum fragrance echoes the name Niou.
An uninked block is pressed into thick paper to make raised or recessed detail. A photograph taken from one angle can flatten that relief and miss changes in reflected light.
Poetry groups exchanged sheets carrying their verses and shared references. Actor commissions could commemorate roles, events or relationships with admirers. The intended circle helped determine the print’s imagery and words.
Collectors exchanged illustrated calendars in the 1760s, before the surge in poetry commissions from the 1780s. Both used private commissions to bring designers, block cutters and printers together.
Haiku surimono continued after the decline of Edo kyōka fashion. An 1891 sheet is a later new work; a late-Meiji copy repeats an earlier design; a modern reproduction can use newly cut blocks to make later impressions.
A shikishiban sheet, roughly 20.5 by 18.5 centimeters, presents image and verse on one surface. A longer sheet can fold lengthwise with imagery outside and extended text inside.
It encoded the year’s thirty- and twenty-nine-day months. Elaborate private commissions encouraged multicolor printing, which also reached a broader buying public through nishiki-e.
Object and historical images are identified beside the image and sourced below.