Japanese painting. Scrolls and screens

Unidentified Japanese painters · late 13th century

The scrolls recount Sugawara Michizane’s exile, posthumous vengeance and transformation into the deity Tenjin. This set is among the earliest important surviving versions. Episodes were designed to appear successively as a viewer unrolled the image.

Unidentified Japanese painters · Kamakura period (1185–1333), 14th century

The handscroll recounts the monk Ryōnin’s life and the spread of his teaching. After a vision of Amida Buddha, he encouraged shared recitation of the nembutsu prayer. One person’s merit was understood to benefit everyone. Unrolling the work an arm’s length at a time revealed successive encounters and conversions.

Unidentified Japanese painters · early 17th century

Five episodes from Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji share one landscape although they occur at different times. Their subjects were chosen for auspicious associations. The screens may have belonged to a bride’s trousseau and travelled to her new home. Classical literature entered domestic furnishing and family wishes.

Tawaraya Sōtatsu · c. 1634

The inscription comes from The Tales of Ise, a tenth-century poetic narrative. It praises Sumiyoshi's shore in spring. The red building above identifies the famous shrine. Poetry, image, and knowledge of a place worked together, allowing viewers to recognize a cultural landscape from a few features.

Ike Taiga · 1755/65

Pilgrims visit a nun believed able to communicate with the bodhisattva Jizō. Taiga accompanies the scene with his own inscription. He renewed Chinese-derived literati painting through Japanese everyday life and humour. The marks may have been made with twisted paper dipped in ink rather than a conventional brush.

Sesson Shukei · ca. 1570

Gibbons try to catch the moon’s reflection, a Zen image of mistaking appearance for reality. Sesson developed imagery associated with the Chinese monk-painter Muqi into a large Japanese screen. Scale and folds changed the experience of ink painting.

Sesson Shukei · About 1560

The monk-painter Sesson developed his manner while travelling through eastern Japan. Read from right to left, the screens move from early plum blossoms to snowy mountains. Temples, villages and boats share an imagined Chinese landscape. The folded surfaces intensify depth within a setting suited to natural and religious contemplation.

Unidentified Japanese painters · c. 1600

The screens show European merchants, probably Portuguese, accompanied by Catholic priests. Their Japanese name referred to ships arriving from the south. The Portuguese were later expelled, and European trade was restricted to Dutch presence. The painting preserves an early Japanese view of foreign visitors and their belongings.

Kano Sansetsu · 1646

Four sliding panels once formed a wall at Tenshō’in in Kyoto’s Myōshinji complex. Fresh blossoms appear on an old twisted trunk. Paintings from the reverse now survive separately in Minneapolis. Museum separation changed the ensemble’s architectural experience.

Hasegawa Sôya · c. 1650

A bridge, moon and willows evoked Uji, a place familiar from classical Japanese poetry. Sōya, son of Hasegawa Tōhaku, continued his father’s work in large decorative formats. Gold and silver appear as leaf, dust and paint. Even the direction of applied gold leaf reinforces the bridge’s curve.

Unidentified Japanese painters · mid 17th century

This screen survives as half of an original pair. Bold patterns and bright colours belong to Edo decorative culture, supported by warriors, aristocrats and prosperous townspeople. Maize had arrived from abroad. Its close observation records an interest in new plants and natural knowledge.

Tosa Mitsuoki · c. 1675

At courtly seasonal gatherings, poems were written on narrow paper slips and tied to branches. This screen formed a pair with flowering cherry and was associated with Empress Tōfukumon-in. As shogunal power grew, the imperial court sustained older poetic customs. Painting preserved that cultural identity.

Ogata Kōrin · ca. 1704–9

Kōrin used paired brushes to draw wave contours. Branching foam turns observed water into a forceful decorative pattern. The Dōsū seal and recent research support a date during his Edo residence, between 1704 and 1709.

Kiyohara Yukinobu · late 17th century

Yukinobu, daughter of Kusumi Morikage, adapted inherited ink-painting themes. Quails and grain occupy an asymmetrical arrangement with open space around them. The museum proposes domestic harmony as a reading of the grouping within flower-and-bird tradition.

Itō Jakuchū · 1755

Jakuchū managed his family’s grocery business before turning fully to painting. This is among his earliest dated works from that transition. An old trunk, fresh blossoms and the moon join close botanical attention with a decorative arrangement across the surface.

Maruyama Ōkyo · 1769

The herons’ white bodies are unpainted paper, defined by soft washes around them. Ōkyo advocated drawing living subjects from different viewpoints. Observation renewed established bird-and-flower themes through close attention to natural structure.

Ike Taiga · mid-1700s

The screen's title corresponds to a design in Taiga's Brush Methods. A stream descends from the mountains into a river, and a village lies farther back. Moving water and wet ink develop the theme of a landscape after rain. A large foreground rock connects the viewer's position with the distant scene.

Matsumura Goshun · 1785

The low screen was probably a partition for a small tea room. Its inscription identifies China's Heng mountain range and singles out Mount Furong. Goshun may have followed his teacher Buson's final treatment of the same subject. Gold and silver let the restrained landscape respond to a room's changing light.

Sakai Hōitsu · 1816

An inscription dates this screen to autumn 1816. Hōitsu used the priestly name Monsen Kishin after becoming a monk. Rinpa mottled-ink effects meet close observation of a persimmon tree, joining decorative design with uneven natural surfaces.

Yosa Buson · 1781

A farmer shoos a crow from his grain while a water buffalo pulls the cart through a stream. Buson was a poet who traveled in Basho's footsteps and taught poetry in Kyoto. He learned painting from Chinese printed manuals. The small rural episode joins that book-based training with attention to country life.

Katsukawa Shunsho · About 1780-90

A woman performs the autumn Momijigari dance with a branch of red maple. Her partly loosened outer robe reveals a red sleeve underneath. Props and colour establish the season. Maple leaves connect the performance with the Japanese custom of admiring autumn foliage.

Katsushika Ōi · 1840s

In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, poison is scraped from Guan Yu's arm after an arrow wound while he continues a game. Oi contrasts his composure with the attendants' reactions. Hokusai's daughter collaborated with him and made her own paintings. This is her largest surviving work.

Kawanabe Kyōsai · 1871–89

According to legend, the courtesan wore scenes of Buddhist hells to connect her suffering with former lives. Kyosai returned to the subject several times. Here gods of good fortune and Enma, ruler of hell, appear in a parody on her clothing. The richly patterned robe contains a narrative within the larger portrait.

Noguchi Shohin · 1900

The screens revisit a Chinese gathering of scholars in 353. Guests composed poetry while wine cups floated down a stream. Shōhin became a leading Japanese woman painter, an Imperial Household artist and a prizewinner at Chicago’s 1893 exposition. An old literary subject entered her internationally recognised work.