This small fragment originally belonged to the first of a set of three emaki (handscrolls) depicting romantic tales, battle epics, or religious legends that the Museum acquired in 2002. The scrolls, by an unknown artist, illustrate the Akino yono naga monogatari (A Long Tale for an Autumn Night), the oldest example of a literary genre called chigo monogatari (love tales of young male acolytes) that became popular in Japan in the mid-fourteenth century.

The scene on this fragment represents the first episode in the complicated and tragic love story of two young monks, Keikai and Umewaka. In the pictorial method typical of Japanese handscrolls, this scene, showing Keikai sitting in his room gazing at a cherry tree, appeared with two others against a single unified landscape. In the second scene, Keikai travels to Ishiyamadera, where he spent seven days in prayer, and in the third he leans against a table and dreams of Umewaka. Reuniting the detached piece with the parent scroll restores the great expressive power of the original composition.

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