Two Young Attendants on New Year's Day from the series "Seven Women as the Gods of Good Fortune for the Hanagasa Poetry Club (Hanagasaren shichifukujin)" c. 1820

Katsukawa Shuntei created this woodblock print called "Two Young Attendants on New Year's Day" sometime between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s a bustling scene, one of many designed to celebrate the New Year. Made in Japan, the print gives us insight into the social customs of the Edo period. We see two young servants, likely from a wealthy household, preparing for New Year's festivities. The objects around them—the elaborate floral arrangement and the fan—speak to the cultural values of the time. The print was commissioned by a poetry club, suggesting a connection between artistic patronage and social status. What I find intriguing is how prints like these reflect the intersection of art, commerce, and social life. To fully understand this print, we can turn to collections of prints and other objects, and scholarly work that reconstructs this pivotal era in Japanese history. We can appreciate the social and institutional contexts that shaped its creation and reception.