Minneapolis Institute of Art

Fifty-four Scenes from the Tale of Genji [left of a pair]

Attributed to Tosa Mitsuoki

Date

late 17th century

Medium

Six-panel folding screen, one of a pair, twenty-seven shikishi of painting (ink and color on paper) and twenty-seven shikishi of text (ink on paper), pasted on gilded paper

Department

Asian Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Pictures and short passages of text brushed on 108 small squares of paper arranged on the surface of these screens represent the entirety of The Tale of Genji, with a text-image pairing for each of the Tale’s 54 chapters. Reading the passages of classical Japanese written in elegant calligraphy or identifying a specific scene from the Tale and recalling the characters and dramas involved could provide hours of fun for the screens’ owners and guests. But the screens also could have served simply as a luxurious backdrop for some gathering. Asia

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