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Secondary sourcePainting1594

Illustrated Handscrolls of The Tale of Genji by Ryūjo

Ryūjo · 1594

Five Momoyama-period handscrolls from 1594 illustrating scenes from Murasaki Shikibu's novel, combining painted images with the text.

This later handscroll illustrates scenes from Murasaki Shikibu's novel, showing how her story was retold in art centuries after she wrote it.

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A painted page from an illustrated handscroll of The Tale of Genji. On the left, three court women in layered robes stand on a snowy garden path beside a pine tree, with a pair of mandarin ducks on a pond below. On the right, a seated woman with long black hair, in a red and patterned robe, sits behind a lattice screen on a wooden veranda. Japanese calligraphy text runs down the margins on both sides of the scroll.
Ryūjo, Illustrated Handscrolls of The Tale of Genji, 1594. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

About this source

What it is

This is a set of five handscrolls made in 1594 by the artist Ryūjo, during Japan's Momoyama period. They combine ink-and-color illustrations with written passages from The Tale of Genji, and are now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Why it matters

Murasaki Shikibu wrote the novel around the start of the 11th century, but this scroll shows how artists like Ryūjo kept reinterpreting her story for new audiences nearly six centuries later. It is a later artistic response to her writing, not a record from her own time.

Look closer

  • What details in the painting (clothing, setting, objects) tell you about court life as the artist imagined it?
  • Why might an artist centuries later choose to illustrate this particular story?
  • What has the artist added or changed that might not be in Murasaki's original text?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Murasaki Shikibu on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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