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Murasaki Shikibu (b.978)
Genji monogatari utaejo 
mid-17th century

Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

 

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Chester Beatty Library
Dublin
Ireland

The Tale of Genji
17th century

This scene is from Chapter 8 of The Tale of Genji, the great prose-romance written by the female courtier Murasaki Shikibu in the early eleventh century, and considered to be one of the masterpieces of Japanese literature. A novel of enormous complexity and magnitude, it deals mainly with the career and amorous adventures of its idealised hero, Prince Genji. Very shortly after the completion of the novel, court artists began to illustrate the main events of the story in paintings, and ever since, The Tale of Genji has been one of the most popular artistic subjects in Japan.

This album contains illustrations from six chapters of the book, each accompanied by an appropriate poem or a piece of prose. Here, on a moonlit night after the festival of the cherry blossoms, the 19-year-old Genji enters the room of the Princess Oborozukiyo, the sixth daughter of the Minister of the Right.

The paper used for the texts is an elegant quality of shikishi decorative paper, with background designs of grass and landscapes in gold ink. The richly-coloured and detailed paintings are in the style of the Tosa school. The Tosa school of painting was based on the ‘Yamato-e’ or native style of Japanese painting traditionally used to illustrate The Tale of Genji, and these illustrations display many traditional conventions of Japanese painting. These include black outlines filled in with brilliant, flat colours; the use of gold clouds to frame scenes and provide a foil for pigments; a high viewpoint and 'blown-away' roofs that allow the reader a clear view of the action inside buildings; and conventionalised figures characterised by their voluminous robes and pear-shaped faces with stylised facial features known as ‘hikime kagihana’ (‘lines for the eyes, hook for the nose’).