Artworks

Nenjū gyōji emaki (Scroll of Events Throughout the Year)

Artwork · Tokiwa Mitsunaga (original, lost); copy by Sumiyoshi Jokei, Sumiyoshi Jokei · 12th century · emakimono

A set of handscrolls recording the annual ceremonies and celebrations of the imperial court and the capital, made by Tokiwa Mitsunaga (active about 1173) for the retired emperor Emperor Go-Shirakawa, who wished to revive important court ceremonies. The original is lost; it survives in a seventeenth-century copy by Sumiyoshi Jokei. Scenes shown in the book: a cockfight in the garden of a nobleman’s shinden-zukuri residence on the third day of the third month, the lord and his guests watching from the raised shutters, the ladies behind blinds; and the Shingonin of the imperial palace prepared for the Mishihō rites of the new year, with paintings of the Five Myōō hung as ritual furnishings. Mason’s captions date the original to the mid and to the late twelfth century. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 109, 157, figs. 135, 191. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.