Section of an Illustrated Tale of Genji Poetry Contest (1400s): Art, History and Details

Section of an Illustrated Tale of Genji Poetry Contest (1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This hanging scroll was once part of a handscroll depicting a waka (thirty-one syllable verse) poetry contest between characters from the 11th-century literary classic Tale of Genji. In this section, a woman known informally as Kumoi no kari, or “Goose in Fog,” after a lovelorn line she hums in the novel, is pitted against Higekuro no taishō, or “General Blackbeard.” Three of his poems, numbered 46 to 48, from “The Handsome Pillar” chapter appear over his image. The subsequent three poems inscribed above Kumoi no kari are presented as her “responses,” and come from "The Plum Tree Branch", “New Wisteria Leaves”, and "Evening Mist" chapters.

Object facts

• Title: Section of an Illustrated Tale of Genji Poetry Contest
• Date: 1400s
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: section of a handscroll mounted as a hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 14.4 x 39.9 cm (5 11/16 x 15 11/16 in.); Mounted with knobs: 91.2 x 56.9 cm (35 7/8 x 22 3/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1989.119

A detail from the museum

General Blackbeard laments having smelly ash poured upon him by his angry wife in one of the poems.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Leighton R. Longhi

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review: Selections 1989.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 77, no. 2, 1990, pp. 38–79.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.