Emakimono

• 1. Introduction

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  Emakimono, Japan's own tradition of illustrated horizontal handscrolls, traces back to the Nara period, between 710 and 794 CE. A single reader would sit alone on a mat, with the scroll resting on a low table or the floor. Using one hand to unwind and the other to rewind, the story emerged little by little. Only about 60 centimetres of painted story would be visible at any moment. It moved right to left, following the direction of Japanese writing. That private, unhurried encounter with a rolled story shaped an entire art form for centuries. The earliest scrolls that arrived in Japan were copies of Chinese originals. Within a few centuries, a distinctly Japanese style had taken hold. It tied itself to the court, to Buddhist temples, and eventually to warriors and wandering monks. Most of the artists who painted these scrolls are unknown today. Even so, their work now offers one of the only surviving windows into medieval Japanese daily life. Why did a borrowed Chinese format become something so recognizably Japanese? And why do so few of its painters have names at all?

• 2. Anatomy Of A Scroll

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  A finished scroll could run from under a metre to several metres in length. Some are even reported as long as 40 feet. Each one held a story or a string of anecdotes, whether a literary chronicle or a Buddhist parable, painted or stamped onto paper or silk. Two elements made up the work: kotoba-gaki, the passages of calligraphic text, and e, the painted sections themselves. Their proportions shifted by period and by artist. In scrolls built around a piece of literature, text alone could occupy two-thirds of the space. Other works pulled the opposite direction. The Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga favoured image so heavily that its text nearly disappeared.

  Height stayed modest, averaging between 30 and 39 centimetres. Length, by contrast, averaged 9 to 12 metres. That narrow, elongated shape meant a finished emakimono could really only be read by one person at a time. Historically, that reader was drawn from the aristocracy or the high clergy. Once closed, the scroll was bound with a cord. It was stored alone or alongside others in a box, sometimes decorated with elaborate patterns. Most works kept to a single roll or stayed within one to three scrolls. A story could stretch across dozens of scrolls if its scale demanded it.

• 3. Chinese Roots

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  Long before scrolls reached Japan, Chinese scribes recorded documents on bamboo and wooden slips. Only later, during the Han dynasty, did paper and silk handscrolls become the standard format. Buddhism carried the handscroll across to Japan centuries afterward, along with the religious texts it was used to preserve.

  The oldest surviving Japanese handscroll dates to the 8th century, during the Nara period. It traces the life of Gautama Buddha up to his Illumination. Its style still looks naive, close to the Six Dynasties and early Tang dynasty manner, with paintings arranged in friezes above the text. Historians consider it very likely a direct copy of an older Chinese model. Several versions of that model have been identified. No originals of it survive in China today. The Heian court that followed would take this borrowed format and turn it into something entirely its own, starting with a new way of writing.

• 4. The Heian Court

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  The Genpei War grew out of a court more absorbed in art and intrigue than in governing. That same Heian court is now remembered as the peak of old Japanese civilization. What survives instead is an image of codified refinement. A restrained, melancholic sensibility runs through it, one the Japanese call mono no aware, the feeling of the impermanence of things.

  Relations with China broke down until the 9th century, as the Tang dynasty collapsed into disorder. Art historian Miyeko Murase describes what followed as the emergence of a national taste. It was the first time Japanese culture had pulled away from Chinese influence since the early Kofun period. Women at court led that shift in literature. They adopted hiragana, a new syllabary that was simpler and closer to spoken Japanese, while men continued studying Chinese script. Court women's novels, or monogatari, and diaries, or nikki, recorded the intimacies of love affairs and political intrigue as they unfolded. The best known of these is The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting at the 10th century Imperial Court.

  Painting followed a similar path. Yamato-e, as this new style was later named, began inside the Buddhist art of the Tendai and Shingon sects before deepening under Pure Land Buddhism. Its secular version grew out of the sliding partitions and screens of the Heian Imperial Palace. These were painted with scenes drawn from waka poetry, seasonal rites and famous places across the archipelago. That style spread among the nobility, especially among ladies drawn to illustrating novels, and had become common by the early 10th century. By the 11th century it was fashionable enough to appear in the seasonal landscapes painted inside the Amida Hall at the Byōdō-in temple. That work is considered a masterpiece of early yamato-e.

  No emakimono from the 9th or 10th century survives today. The oldest one mentioned in period sources, an illustration of the Yamato Monogatari, was offered to the Empress sometime between 872 and 907. Ladies of the court were gradually joined by professional painters. These worked out of palace workshops, known as e-dokoro, or out of temples. Their combined efforts would soon push the format toward its most accomplished period yet.

• 5. Court Versus Countryside

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  By the late Heian period, yamato-e had split into two recognizable currents. These were called onna-e, or women's painting, and otoko-e, or men's painting. The Genji Monogatari Emaki, designed sometime between 1120 and 1140, illustrates The Tale of Genji. It follows the political and amorous intrigues of Prince Hikaru Genji. Its rich, opaque colours were applied using the tsukuri-e method. Its focus on emotional peaks set entirely inside the Imperial Palace marks it as classic onna-e. Each painted episode is followed by a calligraphic passage on paper decorated with gold and silver powder. The artist favoured an oblique viewpoint, guiding the eye along diagonals from the top right toward the bottom left. Rooftops were removed entirely to reveal the interiors below, a technique called fukinuki yatai.

  A second onna-e work, the Nezame Monogatari Emaki, shares that same visual language. It leans softer and more decorative, giving nature itself room to carry the characters' feelings. Otoko-e took the opposite subject matter, turning instead to the daily lives of ordinary people, historical chronicles and the biographies of famous monks. The Shigisan Engi Emaki, painted around the middle of the 12th century, exemplifies this current. It uses dynamic, free lines, light colour and a distinctly humorous tone. Colour appears only in light touches, leaving much of the paper bare, while calligraphy shrinks to make room for long, boundless scenes.

  The Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga, working entirely in monochrome ink, turns its attention to gently caricaturing the everyday customs of Buddhist monks. The Ban Dainagon Ekotoba goes further still, retelling a political conspiracy from the year 866. It blends the free lines of otoko-e with the rich colour of onna-e. Together with the Genji Monogatari Emaki and the Shigisan Engi Emaki, these two scrolls make up the Four Great Illustrated Handscrolls of Japan. All four were later designated National Treasures. As the court's authority weakened, provincial lords such as the Taira and the Minamoto rose to power. Painters turned that same unrest to religious ends. Six realms Buddhist paintings, or rokudō-e, including the Hell Scroll, used horror imagery to frighten believers into faith.

• 6. The Warrior Age

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  Art historians commonly describe the 12th and 13th centuries as the golden age of emakimono. This span covers the end of the Heian period and most of the Kamakura period. Under a new warrior class and newly powerful Buddhist sects, production grew heavier and its themes more varied than before. Painters began merging the onna-e and otoko-e currents into a single style, adding a sharper realism to both. The Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki captures this shift well. It recounts the life and death of Sugawara no Michizane, a 9th century Minister later revered as a kami, or god. Its rich colour, tense outlines and realistic faces draw on both Buddhist and Shinto imagery.

  Power by this point rested with the bakufu, the shogunate government of the warrior class. Its patrons commissioned some of the era's most celebrated military scrolls. The surviving section of the Heiji Monogatari Emaki is held today at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It builds toward a dramatic climax, the burning of a palace and a battle between foot soldiers. Art historian Akiyama Terukazu called it "a masterpiece on the subject of the world's military." In a similar spirit, a noble warrior commissioned the Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba. It recorded his own exploits during the Mongol invasions of Japan.

  Realistic portraiture, called nise-e, flourished alongside these military chronicles. The Sanjūrokkasen Emaki and the Zuijin Teiki Emaki, the latter attributed to Fujiwara no Nobuzane, both present portrait galleries painted in this vein. Religious life shifted too, as the esoteric Tendai and Shingon sects lost ground to Pure Land Buddhism, which preached simple devotion to the Amida Buddha. During the 13th and 14th centuries, these sects used emakimono heavily to spread their teachings. Public sermons known as e-toki were common, where a monk explained a scroll's contents to an audience. Those sessions pushed artists toward larger scrolls with disproportionately large figures, visible from a distance, as seen in the Ippen Shōnin Eden.

  Many temples of the period commissioned monk-painters to illustrate their own founding stories. Others recorded the biographies of the monks who inspired them, including illustrated lives of Ippen and Xuanzang and the Kegon Engi Emaki. The Ippen biography, painted by a monk, shows rare influences from Song dynasty wash technique and Tang dynasty shan shui style. It also includes precise depictions of forts across Japan. Interest in the Heian court itself revived partway through the Kamakura period. This produced works such as the Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki, which traces the life of the Genji author. Its style is more decorative and extroverted than earlier scrolls. That renewed nostalgia for a vanished court would not last.

• 7. Fading Light, New Tales

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  By the close of the Kamakura period, emakimono had begun losing its central place in Japanese art. Compositions grew more technical than inspired, marked by an exaggerated use of gold and silver powder. That mannered tendency shows clearly in the longest known emakimono, a 48-scroll work completed in 1307, and in the Kasuga Gongen Genki E of 1309. At the same time, Chinese Song art and Zen Buddhism introduced a new movement built on ink wash painting. It was called sumi-e or suiboku-ga, and it was championed by artists such as Tenshō Shūbun and Sesshū Tōyō.

  The Tosa school kept the yamato-e tradition alive on its own. It led the imperial painting workshop, the edokoro, all the way into the 18th century. Tosa Mitsunobu produced several temple-founding scrolls dated 1517, 1497 and 1487. He also painted a 1503 version of the Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki, always attentive to detail and colour within a fairly conventional composition.

  A different kind of emakimono, otogi-zōshi, gained popularity across the 15th and 16th centuries. It was sometimes called nara-ehon. These were small, symbolic and often funny tales, drawing on mythology, folklore, religious belief and contemporary life. Their appeal grew from a waning taste for hectic or heavily religious stories. Dreams, laughter, the supernatural and social caricature took their place; many otogi-zōshi scrolls depicted yōkai and other folk creatures. Surviving examples include Buncho no sasshi and Sazare-ichi as genre paintings, and the Tsuchigumo Sōshi among the supernatural Buddhist tales.

  In the early 17th century, the painter Iwasa Matabē opened his own workshop. He produced large, lavish picture scrolls, later regarded as a forerunner of ukiyo-e. His Jōruri Monogatari Emaki, a romantic drama, is noted for its brilliant colour. His Yamanaka Tokiwa Monogatari Emaki, a revenge tale following a parental murder, is prized for its dynamic, expressive figures. Painters Tawaraya Sōtatsu and Yosa Buson kept returning to the narrative scroll around this same period. The Kanō school followed suit. Kanō Tan'yū painted the Tokugawa clan's battles, including Sekigahara, in a work that echoed the 13th century Heiji Monogatari Emaki. It quietly linked the Minamoto and Tokugawa as Japan's first and last ruling shogun families.

• 8. Nameless Hands, Lasting Record

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  Few emakimono painters are known by name. Heian court sources instead describe painting competitions, called e-awase, where nobles competed around a shared poetic theme. Murasaki Shikibu described such a competition in The Tale of Genji. Kamakura workshops formalized this largely anonymous system further. Some were attached directly to the palace, the kyūtei edokoro. Others were run out of temples and shrines, the jiin edokoro. Patronage shaped subject matter directly. The Heiji Monogatari Emaki was produced for the Minamoto clan after their victory in the Genpei War. One theory even holds that the Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki was meant to pacify evil spirits.

  A handful of names do survive. The nise-e portrait movement was founded by Fujiwara no Takanobu and his son Fujiwara no Nobuzane. The son went on to paint the Zuijin Teiki Emaki and later founded his own school in his father's honour. Among temple workshops, the Kōzan-ji studio was led by the scholar-monk Myōe, who brought in a large number of works from Song dynasty China. Brushstrokes attributed to Jōnin appear on the Kegon Engi Emaki and on a portrait of Myōe himself. They mark some of the first visible Song influences in Japanese painting.

  A large research project at Kanagawa University later mined these scrolls for historical evidence. It sorted their imagery into fifteen categories covering dwellings, domestic routines and life beyond the home, across every age and social class. The Shigisan Engi Emaki alone shows women preparing meals, washing clothes and breastfeeding children. The Sanjūni-ban Shokunin Uta-awase Emaki goes further still, depicting 142 individual artisans from the Muromachi period, ranging from a blacksmith to a sake maker.

  Very few emakimono have come down to the present day intact. Of those that survived, around 20 now hold the status of National Treasure of Japan. That status ensures these otherwise unsigned scrolls remain a permanent part of the historical record.