Tale of Genji Screen (Genji monogatari zu shikishi harimaze byōbu)

This pair of screens bears rectangular shikishi (small sheets of paper used for poetry or miniature paintings) illustrating scenes from The Tale of Genji, the eleventh-century classic of literature by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu. The paintings, produced by an artist or artists of the Tosa school, are affixed to the screen panels at different heights, as are the shikishi of decorated paper upon which sections of text were inscribed, predominantly in kana syllabic script. While this format is not unusual for a set of Genji screens, the background gilded decoration of the screens is uncommon, as it consists of a continuous landscape design of mountains, clouds, and water, rendered mostly in different shades of gold, with sprinkled gold powder and flakes reminiscent of lacquer decoration.

Only twelve chapters from the Genji’s fifty-four are represented, in compositions that follow the standard iconography that had been developed for illustrations of the Tale. The opening scene, from Chapter One, in the right-hand panel of the right-hand screen, depicts the child Genji being studied by a Korean physiognomist. Episodes and text from subsequent chapters follow from right to left across the surface of the pair.