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Secondary sourcePaintinglate Edo period

Murasaki Shikibu painting by Satake Eikai

Satake Eikai · late Edo period

A late Edo period colour painting on silk showing Murasaki Shikibu seated writing beneath a full moon, made centuries after her death.

A later imagined portrait of Murasaki Shikibu writing, showing how Edo-period Japan remembered her as a famous author.

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Hanging scroll painting in colour on silk: a pale full moon in a dusky golden sky above a seated woman in layered robes writing at a low black lacquer table, with an ink stone and paper, beside a folding screen decorated with autumn plants.
Satake Eikai, Murasaki Shikibu, late Edo period.

About this source

What it is

This is a hanging scroll painted in colour on silk by the Edo-period artist Satake Eikai. It shows a seated woman in layered robes writing at a low lacquer table, with ink and paper nearby, beside a screen decorated with autumn plants, under a pale moon.

Why it matters

The painting does not show the real Murasaki Shikibu, since it was made many centuries after she lived. Instead it shows how later Japanese artists imagined her as a cultured woman of letters, writing by moonlight. It reveals how her image was shaped and remembered long after her own time.

Look closer

  • What details suggest this woman is a writer?
  • Why might the artist have chosen to show her under a moon?
  • What does this image tell us about how later generations saw Murasaki, rather than about her real life?

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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