印籠と牛根付, Edo period (1615?1868), probably 1817, Japan, Part of an album of woodblock prints (surimono) ; ink and color on paper, 5 1/4 x 7 3/8 in. (13. 3 x 18. 7 cm), Prints, Totoya Hokkei (Japanese, 1780?1850), 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