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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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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’).
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