Surimono (literally ‘printed things’) constitute one of the most delicate genres in Japanese printmaking. This genre fascinates because it combines poetry and image and because it presents a pictorial puzzle, which provides the viewer with a particular insight into the intellectual and literary world of late 18th- and early 19th-century Edo (today’s Tokyo).
The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam is home to one of the most important collections of surimono in the world and the true beauty of the collection can now be appreciated in full, with all the prints illustrated in colour for the first time.
Matthi Forrer, Curator of Japanese Arts at the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden,the Netherlands, has published extensively on Hokusai and various related subjects, such as original sketches, book publishing and publishing history, kyka albums and kykasurimono. Moreover, he has curated several exhibitions on Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Sharaku, both in the West and in Japan.
