Kano Tsunenobu (Kyoto, 1636 - 1713, Tokyo)
Scenes from the Tale of Genji, 1677
Ink, mineral pigment and gold leaf on paper; one of a pair of six fold screens, 170 x 379 cm (66 15/16 x 149 3/16 in.)
This six-panel Japanese screen depicts scenes from the Japanese Tale of Genji, painted predominantly in greens, brown, gray and white with touches of red and blue against a glistening gold background. Each scene is set within and separated from the others by green trees and hills and gold cloud-like formations lending a calm, pastoral overall effect. The human figures are finely painted and very small. On the top of the first two panels on the right is an illustration of Prince Genji’s initiation at age twelve, in which a group of figures sit on white ground in a semicircle looking inward toward a larger person in their center and a slender person on what appears to be a platform. Below a different scene, when Genji is sixteen, shows the inside of a house where a half dozen of Genji’s friends are sitting on a green floor having a discussion about girls. In the third scene on the top of the third panel, Genji accompanied by a lord and page, peers through a brown brushwood fence at a young girl and her page sitting on an open stilted porch behind which a figure is seen reclining in an inside room. Next to this scene, in the upper part of the two leftmost panels is the fourth scene, an outdoor procession involving three carts, drawn by horses, each cart surrounded by people milling around outside their carts. A fourth cart belonging to a princess has been pulled off to the side, to make way for the carriage of a lady, precipitating a fight between their respective grooms, illustrated by a group of mostly white-clothed people in conflict being watched by the bystanders. The final scene covers the lower part of the four left panels and centers on Genji and a companion dancing at some distance from one another in the middle of an outdoor area with onlookers watching from the sides including the open porch on the left side. Behind the porch, part of the brown roof of an expansive house has been cut away and we are given a bird’s eye view of several of the interior rooms where inhabitants seem to be involved in daily activities. The entire screen is edged by a narrow gray strip of wood.
Chinese Room
Commentary
Nestled amid the golden clouds in this vibrant pair of screens are depictions of twelve chapters from the Tale of Genji, one of the world’s earliest novels. Written around the year 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting at the court in Kyoto, the story vividly portrays courtly customs through an intricate web of human relations. The protagonist Genji epitomizes the ideal male persona of the time: strikingly attractive and a master of all the arts, he was also a great lover. Indeed much of the long novel revolves around his liaisons with women of the court.
The earliest illustrations of the Tale of Genji are handscrolls of the early twelfth century. These paintings not only set the stylistic standards of the yamato-e (pictures of yamato, or Japan), but also influenced later renditions of the novel. This influence is apparent here in the bird’s-eye-view perspective and thick layering of pigment. The diagonal lines that run through the architectural elements heighten the emotional intensity of the scenes.
Although convention dictated that characters from the Tale of Genji should be shown devoid of emotion or individualization, the screens contain many interesting details. The musicians display an unusual range of facial expressions: some converse with one another, while one puffs out his cheeks to play a wind instrument. Such expressive displays can be seen in other Genji illustrations by the seventeenth century, but they are usually reserved for commoners and not the nobility who were considered composed at all times.
Also remarkable are the monochromatic ink landscapes drawn on the sliding doors and screens in the palace interiors depicted in the screens. These meticulously painted landscapes, dragons, birds, and flowers contrast sharply with the colorful screens themselves. This disparity might be intended to stress that the screens were a product of the Kan? school, whose painting styles and techniques were derived from Chinese ink painting (the kara-e pictures of Tang China) as opposed to yamato-e.
Source: Midori Oka, "Pair of Folding Screens: Scenes from the Tale of Genji," in Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 186-87.
The earliest illustrations of the Tale of Genji are handscrolls of the early twelfth century. These paintings not only set the stylistic standards of the yamato-e (pictures of yamato, or Japan), but also influenced later renditions of the novel. This influence is apparent here in the bird’s-eye-view perspective and thick layering of pigment. The diagonal lines that run through the architectural elements heighten the emotional intensity of the scenes.
Although convention dictated that characters from the Tale of Genji should be shown devoid of emotion or individualization, the screens contain many interesting details. The musicians display an unusual range of facial expressions: some converse with one another, while one puffs out his cheeks to play a wind instrument. Such expressive displays can be seen in other Genji illustrations by the seventeenth century, but they are usually reserved for commoners and not the nobility who were considered composed at all times.
Also remarkable are the monochromatic ink landscapes drawn on the sliding doors and screens in the palace interiors depicted in the screens. These meticulously painted landscapes, dragons, birds, and flowers contrast sharply with the colorful screens themselves. This disparity might be intended to stress that the screens were a product of the Kan? school, whose painting styles and techniques were derived from Chinese ink painting (the kara-e pictures of Tang China) as opposed to yamato-e.
Source: Midori Oka, "Pair of Folding Screens: Scenes from the Tale of Genji," in Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 186-87.