Artworks

Heiji monogatari emaki: Night Attack on the Sanjō Palace

Artwork · Anonymous · second half of the 13th century · emakimono · Museum of Fine Arts Boston

The illustrated tale of the events of 1160, when Minamoto no Yoshitomo and Fujiwara no Nobuyori (1133–1160) imprisoned the retired emperor Emperor Go-Shirakawa — a coup crushed by Taira no Kiyomori. Nobuyori’s troops attack the Sanjō Palace at night, bundle Go Shirakawa into a carriage and set the buildings on fire; servants and ladies jump into a well, others are trampled by horses. The scroll is unusually long and uninterrupted by text: the flames fill the upper part, the human action the lower, in bright colours and free brushwork. The artist owes a debt to the Ban Dainagon scroll; nothing is known of him. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 183–184, fig. 213. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.