Peonies and Canary (Shakuyaku, kanaari), from an untitled series known as Small Flowers

Canaries were not Japanese birds. Dutch ships brought them into Nagasaki during the Edo period, and by Hokusai's time they had become a fashionable pet, kept for their song by samurai and by men of letters. The novelist Kyokutei Bakin, whose books Hokusai had illustrated years before, tried again and again to breed them. Here one dives head first through a clump of pink and white peonies set against a deep blue ground. The sheet belongs to a set of small flower prints issued around 1834 by the Edo publisher Eijudō, each paired with lines of Chinese verse. The couplet at the upper right, by a 12th-century Chinese poet, praises the thousand-petalled peonies of Yangzhou, which in late spring outshine every other flower. This is one impression of an edition, and the Boston museum holds a second one.