WEEK 3

IMAGE NOTES
894
Official envoys to China ends
Only merchants had access
 Heian period
Yamato-E
Japanese-style painting
 o u b u
by
Standing
票部screen ptg
EG:
Detail of Yamato-e style
six-panel standing screen
painting

11th c.

Earliest known Yamato-e

scene of this size
 唐絵
Kara-E
Chinese-style painting
Receding background
Muted blue/green color scheme
Emaki
Narrative hand-scroll ptgs

“rewind option”

Text/pix mounted on
paper squares
Frolicking
Animal
Ink on paper

Satire- animals depicting

humans

Continuous picture scroll

No text
Emaki with text then image
On paper mounted together full-size onto the scroll
Opened right to left
Genji no
Monogatar
Emaki (hand-scroll)

Scene 1 from “The Oak Tree”

Early 12th c.

Ink and pigments on paper.

H- 9”
 “The Oak
Tree” Sc1
Retired Emperor Suzaku

The Third Princess

Genji

[Summary: Emperor Suzaku has wed his

daughter, the Third Princess, to Genji, the story’s hero, and has given up the
throne and become
a Buddhist monk. The Third Princess gives birth to a child not by her
husband but by her
husband’s friend, Kashiwagi. Her health is not good after the birth. Suffering
from guilt, she
wishes to become a nun, but Genji will not allow it. Informed of her illness,
her father the ex-
Emperor (Retired Emperor Suzaku, now a Buddhist priest) comes to pay a
 吹き抜き屋台

Blown-off Roof
The artistic convention of removing the building’s
roof and interior of walls “removed” for the viewer,
beams visible, curtain room dividers and rolled
reed of bamboo blinds.
　 引き目鉤鼻

Line for Eyes, hook for

The abbreviated technique of illustrating the faces
is not due to an “unskilled” artist but is rather a
way for readers to easily identify the characters’
emotions. These faces are painted with fine lines
rather than a single brush stroke which creates
“The Oak
Tree” Sc2
Yugiri

Kashiwagi fallen ill

[Summary: Kashiwagi has also fallen

ill with guilt, which is only worsened
when he learns
the Third Princess has become a nun.
In this scene Yûgiri, his good childhood
friend, pays
him a visit, but Kashiwagi is too weak
to sit up. He calls Yûgiri to his bedside
and
confesses his misdeeds, asking his
Tale of
Genji text
Ink calligraphy on cut or
powdered gold and silver
leaf paper

Chapter from “The Oak

Tree”

H- 9”
 “The Oak Tree” Sc3
[Summary: The fiftieth day of the birth of the baby, Kaoru, is celebrated in early spring.
Red and black lacquered plates are heaped with food. Genji is at the top with Kaoru in his
arms, and the ladies-in-waiting are below. In the extreme upper left of the illustration is the
Third Princess, the child's mother, indicated merely by the fabric of her kimono showing
through the curtains behind which she sits. The text accompanying this scene describes
Genji's thoughts as he goes through the painful ritual. He knows that the attendants
realize he is not the father. His
emotional discomfort is suggested by the physical awkwardness of his placement at the
top of
the sharply slanting floor where the space is so cramped that he cannot even raise his
head.
 Details of “The Oak Tree”
Sc3
Genji holding baby Kaoru

Third Princess indicated by Kimono of upper-left

Karmic retribution/consequence
Consort
Similar to a “wife” in Heian period

EG: Fujitsubo (Genji’s father’s consort)

 Architecture
plays an imp
role in the te ortant
lling of this e
it interrupts pisode--
the leftward
motion of th
e illustration
as shields th as well
e figures fro
playing out m view--
the theme o
karmic retrib f
ution

Under-drawing
Covered by opaque pigments, water-
based mineral and vegetable
pigments
 　
“The Bell Cricket” Sc2

[Summary: It is
viewing festivit the same night of autumn
call to the retir ies and Genji pays a long-a moon-
discovered the ed Emperor Reizei. Reizei h waited
illegitimate chil truth of his birth (that he isas
Emperor’s [Gend of Genji and Fujitsubo, th the
Reizei faces to ji’s father] consort). In this e
veranda). Althowards us (toward the railin scene,
father, he mus ugh he knows the truth abg of the
fiction of an unt keep silent and preserve out his
by the diagona broken line of succession. the
especially the cl lines of the architecture—Framed
two men, who eiling beam that runs betw
group of aristo each look downward—and een the
crats p the
Reizei faces towards us (toward the railing of the veranda).
Framed by the diagonal lines of the architecture—especially
the ceiling beam that runs between the two men, who each
look downward—and the
group of aristocrats playing music on the veranda, we sense
the tension between a father
and a son who cannot speak their thoughts to one another.
 “The
Rites”

[Summary: Genji’s favorite wife Murasaki (not the same as the author,
Murasaki Shikibu) dies at the end of Chapter 40 (The Rites). In this
image, Murasaki, to our right, has propped herself on an armrest to
view her garden; her depiction takes up half of the scene; Genji is to
our left. (Her adopted daughter, Akashi, sits to the side, between
Muraskaki and Genji.) The depiction of nature and plants evokes the
emotions of departing and the impermanence of human relationships.
The decorated text is covered with roundels, mists and butterflies that
illustrate the fragile nature of her health. Genji, who is 51, and
Murasaki, aged 43, exchange poems in her last moment. The scene is
filled with nostalgia and is a reminder of the transitory nature of
human existence, an overall theme of The Tale of Genji. In the text, we
see that the calligrapher has purposefully written the narrative in a
frantic manner, joining the words and lines together. Genji never quite
recovers from Lady Murasaki’s death and dies himself in the beginning
of Chapter 41. The rest of the novel follows the lives of his
 “Archery Contest”
Detail from Frolicking Animals and Humans hand-scroll

Heian period
“The Fight”
Notice: Volume, gesture lines

Esoteric Buddhist monks made sketches for under-

paintings to produce Buddhist iconography
“Chanting Sutras at
Memorial”
On scene: Crying, praying with beads, reading of
scrolls, sutras by young priests, priest arrives in robe of
leaves.
All indicate a Buddhist memorial service.
“The Buddha Alter at
Memorial”
Monkey as high-priest with special robe

Frog as Buddha

“Wise Owl”
“Legends of
Mt. Shigi”
Scrolls
Heian or Kamakura period

Ink and color on Paper

No text, story known from

other sources

Continuous narrative

Story of the priest’s

begging bowl and the
lord’s granary
 Showin
g
beggin the flying
g
taking bowl of pries
the gra t
nary.
Priest of Mt. Shigi ordering a servant of the land owner
to place a bale of rice into a begging bowl to begin the
resolution process (return of rice bales but not the
granary).