Scenes and Calligraphic Excerpts from The Tale of Genji

This pair of screens features large squarish paintings illustrating scenes from The Tale of Genji. The paintings, produced by an artist or artists of the Tosa school, are affixed to the screen panels at different heights, as are the decorated shikishi upon which texts from the tale are inscribed, predominantly in kana. This format was not unusual for a set of Genji screens; what sets these apart is the spectacular continuous landscape of mountains, clouds, and water rendered mostly in shades of gold with sprinkled gold powder and flakes and silver leaf. This gorgeous embellishment, reminiscent of lacquer decoration, conjures up an imaginary aura of the court culture of Heian-period Japan, while the calligraphy reflects Momoyama-period styles. The luxurious application of gold decoration on the screens calls to mind a set of decorated screens with poetry brushed by monk-painter and calligrapher Shōkadō Shōjō (1584–1639), also created in the early seventeenth century. Both half-height screens (chū-byōbu) similarly use gold decoration to conjure up continuous scenery of waterways and mountains.[1]

Only twelve of Genji’s fifty-four chapters are represented here, in compositions that follow the standard iconography that had been developed for illustrations of the tale by artists of the Tosa school. Some of the scenes, however, such that illustrating Chapter 11, diverge from the standard repertory of Tosa Mitsuyoshi (1539–1613), the head of the Tosa school through the first decade of the seventeenth century, but is the same as used on fan paintings of the Muromachi period. Therefore, we can point out that the artist or artists here was not adhering to the mainstream style of Mitsuyoshi, but rather following the revivalist style advocated by Tosa Mitsunori (1583–1638).[2]

Episodes and texts proceed from right to left, though not adhering to the sequence of the original narrative, across the surface of the screens:

Right screen (right to left):
Chapter 1, “The Lady of the Paulownia-Courtyard Chambers” (Kiritsubo)
Chapter 28, “An Autumn Tempest” (Nowaki)
Chapter 4, “The Lady of the Evening Faces” (Yūgao)
Chapter 3, “A Molted Cicada Shell” (Utsusemi)
Chapter 9, “Leaves of Wild Ginger” (Aoi)
Chapter 10, “A Branch of Sacred Evergreen” (Sakaki)

Left screen (right to left):
Chapter 23, “First Song of Spring” (Hatsune)
Chapter 27, “Cresset Fires” (Kakaribi)
Chapter 8, “A Banquet Celebrating Cherry Blossoms” (Hana no en)
Chapter 22, “A Lovely Garland” (Tamakazura).
Chapter 49, ”Trees Encoiled in Vines of Ivy” (Yadoriki, or Yadorigi)
Chapter 11, “The Lady at the Villa of Scattering Orange Blossoms” (Hanachirusato)

These screens are distinctive for the way the shikishi are artfully arranged on the decorated background to create a synergy conveying the fantastical effects of a fictive tale set in the distant past. For instance, the rightmost panel of the left-hand screen (depicts a scene from the first part of Chapter 23 in which Genji (age thirty-six) visits his young daughter, the Akashi Princess. Genji exchanges new Year’s greetings and poetry with her and the other women of the Rokujō estate. Her real mother, the Akashi Lady, who remains in her winter quarters of the mansion, has sent over delicacies in woven baskets and an artificial warbler on a pine branch. These gifts are accompanied by a poem, which appears as the first three columns in the calligraphic excerpt inscribed here.

年月を　松にひかれて　ふる人に
けふ鴬の　初音きかせよ

Toshitsuki o
matsu ni hikarete
furu hito ni
kyō uguisu no
hatsune kikase yo

Through the months and years,
ever drawn to the seedling pine,
waits the aged one:
today permit her to listen
to the warbler’s first spring song.

—Trans. Edwin Cranston.[3]

Viewers of this screen would have enjoyed picking out their favorite episodes from Genji while enjoying the multilayered effect of decorated golden clouds on shikishi superimposed over an abstracted landscape background.

—John T. Carpenter, Sept. 12, 2024. Adapted from John T. Carpenter with Tim T. Zhang, The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, 2024, cat. 36.

Notes

1.See Tamamushi Satoko, “Kinsei shoki no byōbu to sho to ryōshi sōshoku: Shōkadō Shōjō hitsu ‘Chokusen wakashū byōbu’ o megutte” (Screens, calligraphy, and decorated paper in the early modern times: “Screen of Imperially Commissioned Collections of Japanese poems” by Shōkadō Shōjō). Bijutsushi 117 (March 1985), pp. 55–75.

2. For a discussion of Tosa Mitsunori’s revival of early Genji imagery, see Kikuchi Ayako, “Tosa Mitsunori ni okeru koten no sai-kesshōka: Genji-e zuyō no saihakkutsu” (The revival of classical themes by Tosa Mitsunori: Rediscovering motifs from The Tale of Genji). In Sano Midori sensei koki kinen ronshū: Zōkei no poetika: Nihon bijutsushi o meguru aratana chihei (Festschrift in honor of Professor Sano Midori: The poetics of form; New horizons in Japanese art history), edited by Sano Midori sensei Koki Kinen Ronshū Kankōkai, pp. 196–223 (Tokyo: Seikansha, 2021).

3. Translation from Edwin A. Cranston, trans. and ed. A Waka Anthology. Vol. 2, Grasses of Remembrance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 816.

[ Shibunkaku Co., Ltd. , Kyoto, until 2017; sold to Cowles]; Mary and Cheney Cowles , Seattle, 2017–19; donated to MMA

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection," August 10, 2024–August 3, 2025.