Writing Box (Suzuribako) with the “First Song” (Hatsune) Chapter from the Tale of Genji (early 1900s): Art, History and Details

Writing Box (Suzuribako) with the “First Song” (Hatsune) Chapter from the Tale of Genji (early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The design of this box was inspired by an object in the 1639 lacquer wedding set of Chiyohime, the daughter of the shogun (ruler). Information about the set became available in the Meiji period, leading some lacquer artists to emulate its designs. This box features a scene from the chapter “First Song” (Hatsune) of the Tale of Genji, in which Prince Genji and his love Murasaki enjoy her garden. It incorporates the written characters for “first” (初, hatsu) and “sound” (音, ne), indicating the first song of the warbler in spring, associated with the new year—the water dropper for mixing the ink is in the shape of this bird.

Object facts

• Title: Writing Box (Suzuribako) with the “First Song” (Hatsune) Chapter from the Tale of Genji
• Date: early 1900s
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Lacquer
• Technique: Lacquered wood with gold and silver sprinkled powder (maki-e), foil application (kirikane), and metal inlay
• Dimensions: Overall: 22.8 x 26.7 cm (9 x 10 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1970.28.a

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Newman T. Halvorson

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1970.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 58, no. 2, 1971, pp. 22–71.
• Grossman, Nancy, James T. Ulak, Marjorie Williams, and Laurence Channing. Art of Japan: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2005.
• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.

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.