Sunrise on New Year's morning

With its nearly perfect color preservation, this print is arguably the best surviving impression of one of Eishosai Choki’s masterpieces. It comes from a rare, luxurious series featuring beauties in the four seasons of the year and incorporating blown mica. Scholars have identified two states of this print, of which this is believed to be the second due to the lack of outline around the ocean sandbanks. Comb and hairpins precariously askew, a lean beauty pauses next to a washbasin to glance back across the sea to a brilliant red sunrise. With her right hand tucked warmly inside her robes, she reaches the other out from within her inner robe in order to pull her collar against the cold air. The mica-sheen emitting from the black sky and brightness of the water at the top of the print evoke the iridescence of the early morning light. The blossoming pheasant’s eye (fukujuso) plant next to the dipper on the basin signals that this is the auspicious first sunrise of the new year.