Artworks

Genji monogatari emaki (Illustrated Tale of Genji)

Artwork · traditionally attributed to Fujiwara no Takayoshi · first half of the 12th century · emakimono · Tokugawa Art Museum

The illustrated Tale of Genji: originally perhaps ten scrolls covering all fifty-four chapters; twenty pictures survive (Tokugawa Art Museum and Gotoh Museum). Five teams seem to have worked on it, each an aristocrat known for his calligraphy with a master painter who drew in black ink and specialists for the colours, in the tsukuri-e technique, the faces in hikime kagibana, the roofs blown off (fukinuki yatai) to look into the rooms. In the third illustration of the Kashiwagi chapter Genji holds the baby born of his wife’s adultery at the ceremony of acknowledgement, cramped at the top of a steep diagonal; in the Minori chapter the dying Murasaki, Genji and her adopted daughter sit behind a garden of storm-tossed grasses. Produced probably before 1140. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 116–118, figs. 140–141. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.