『春雨集』 摺物帖柳々居辰斎画 若松

Surimono are privately published woodblock prints, usually commissioned by individual poets or poetry groups as a form of New Year’s greeting card. The poems, most commonly kyōka (witty thirty-one syllable verse), inscribed on the prints usually include felicitous imagery connected with spring, which in the lunar calendar begins on the first day of the first month. Themes of surimono are often erudite, frequently alluding to Japanese literary classics in both texts and images.

Credit: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929