Dried Cuttle-Fish and Plum Blossoms 1800 - 1833

Teisai Hokuba made this woodblock print titled "Dried Cuttle-Fish and Plum Blossoms" in Japan during the first half of the 19th century. It depicts dried seafood next to a branch of plum blossoms. These motifs may strike us as odd bedfellows. But the combination of earthly food and delicate, blooming beauty would have struck a chord with Japanese consumers of art. Hokusa was a student of the celebrated artist Katsushika Hokusai, and much like his teacher, he embraced a popular, commercial form of art. Woodblock prints were not unique or precious objects, but rather mass-produced images for consumption by a broad public. The juxtaposition of cuttlefish and plum blossoms would have been understood as a coded visual joke referencing the raunchy, comical verse known as *kyoka*. To better understand the print, we can explore the cultural context of the *kyoka* tradition and the economics of printmaking in Japan at the time. The meaning of art is found in its relation to society.