Elegant yamato-e paintings to go on show at Sen-oku Hakukokan Museum Tokyo

Pre-modern Japanese paintings with literary motifs in the form of handscrolls and folding screens will be the main feature in “Lyrical and Narrative Paintings — The Elegant World of “Yamato-e*,” an exhibition set to run at the Sen-oku Hakukokan Museum Tokyo (Roppongi, Tokyo) in summer 2024.

*Yamato-e

Nara Prefecture in ancient times was a province called Yamato. Since the political and cultural center was there, using the wordYamato became the way to refer to Japan as a whole. Together with the word e (picture), the compound (yamato-e) was used to mean “Japanese-style painting.” Historically, yamato-e refers to a genre of painting which thrived during the Heian period (8th-12th century) and featured Japanese subject matter (nature, literature, history, etc.) as opposed to themes imported from Tang dynasty China and elsewhere. The genre spread from the imperial court, temples and shrines to a wider population in pre-modern Japan.

Lyrical and Narrative Paintings
The Elegant World of Yamato-e

Jun 1 (Sat) – Jul 21 (Sun), 2024

Sen-oku Hakukokan Museum Tokyo
(Roppongi, Tokyo)

*See outline below for details

The exhibition, which opens on June 1, 2024, will put on display a number of elegant monogatari-e (narrative paintings) and uta-e (lyrical paintings) in yamato-e style from the Momoyama and Early Edo periods themed on classic Japanese literature — “Genji Monogatari” (The Tale of Genji), “Ise Monogatari” (The Tales of Ise), “Taketori Monogatari” (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) and other narratives, as well as waka poems by the Immortal Poets — selected from the vast Sumitomo Collection of East Asian and Western works of art housed at the Sen-oku Hakukokan Museum.

The works to go on display include “The Tale of Zegaibo,” a picture scroll based on a story of tengu (mountain goblins) compiled in the “Konjaku Monogatari-shu” anthology of tales from the past, and the “Album of Thirty-six Immortal Poets” by Edo-period Buddhist monk and artist Shokado Shojo (1584-1639). The former is a designated important cultural property of Japan.

The museum used a high-resolution scanner for cultural properties to capture enlarged images of some of the folding-screen paintings to go on show. These images will also be on display to enable visitors to take a closer view of some of the subjects and intricate scenes depicted.