▪︎ Puppy with a Slice of Dried Salmon.

Artist: Totoya Hokkei (Japanese, 1780–1850)

Date: 1825 (Year of the Rooster)

Yashima Gakutei (Japan, 1786?–1868)

Crabs Near the Water's Edge, c.1830

Woodblock print (surimono); ink & color on paper

8 x 7 5/16 in. (20.3 x 18.6 cm)

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York JP1138

Yashima Gakutei - Surimono with a reflection in a mirror of a Japanese woman in a Westernized dress (c.1820s)

A surimono (摺物, “printed thing”) was a type woodblock print in Japan, typically produced in small editions for special occasions rather than for commercial sale. In most cases they contained short poems and elaborate image, usually printed in square format on refined paper. The descriptive part:

A woman, adorning herself at her desk. The jeweled sky, the sunlit sky - spring

The poem can be roughly translated as:

Though writing has its place (=is important), let the eyes wander where they please; over a cup of thin (light?) tea, with a heart that listens at leisure, to the village’s voice.

The woman’s half-absent, inward-looking gaze in the mirror rhyme very well with the poem’s drifting, daydreaming tone. Typically for surimono, it's a fairly small print (~18x20cm), and yet the artist managed to brilliantly show this gaze that drifts past the scroll as if wandering elsewhere.

Decorations for the New Year and New Year Decorations and Tablewares by Ryūryūkyo Shinsai

Japanese, Edo Period, early 19th century 

woodblock print (surimono)