Hokusai created a series of 5 prints traditionally used as New Year’s decorations. Each contained symbols suggesting wishes or hopes for the New Year. These were all vertically oriented long pieces, suggesting they were mounted on silk scrolls and hung, in a manner usually intended for ink brush paintings. One commentator on today’s print even suggests the tree branches covered in snow were created to suggest brush strokes rather than the clean lines characteristic of these woodblock prints.
Today’s print shows cranes in a snow-covered pine tree. Both cranes and pine are traditional symbols of longevity–a typical wish for the new year. This print of Hokusai’s is fairly well-known-not nearly as famous as the Great Wave off Kanagawa, nor as well-known as the Thirty-sex Views of Mount Fuji, but still fairly widespread in its distribution.
Please accept today’s print as my wish for you to have a long, happy, healthy life, with the coming year as a harbinger of that.
Two Cranes on a Snow-covered Pine Tree (Woodcut, 1834)
