Yamabe no Akahito (active 724–736), One of the Three Gods of Poetry From the Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 1

Yamabe no Akahito (active 724–736), One of the Three Gods of Poetry From the Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 1

Yashima Gakutei

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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. This album forms part of a set of three containing more than four hundred surimono. The prints are arranged on facing leaves according to themes or in a way that creates an attractive arrangement of designs, complementary in both color and shape. The printing techniques, pigments, and paper used for surimono were often the highest quality, and represent the epitome of late Edo-period woodblock printing.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Yamabe no Akahito (active 724–736), One of the Three Gods of Poetry From the Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 1Yamabe no Akahito (active 724–736), One of the Three Gods of Poetry From the Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 1Yamabe no Akahito (active 724–736), One of the Three Gods of Poetry From the Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 1Yamabe no Akahito (active 724–736), One of the Three Gods of Poetry From the Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 1Yamabe no Akahito (active 724–736), One of the Three Gods of Poetry From the Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 1

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.