Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki

The tradition & historical record

The Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki (紫式部日記絵巻) is a mid-13th century emaki (Japanese picture scroll) inspired by the private diary (nikki) of Murasaki Shikibu, lady-in-waiting at the 10th–11th century Heian court and author of The Tale of Genji. This emaki belongs to the classical style of Japanese painting known as yamato-e, and revives the iconography of the Heian period. Today there remain four paper scrolls of the emaki in varying condition, and stored in different collections: Hachisuka, Matsudaira, Hinohara scrolls (Tokyo), and Fujita scroll (Fujita Art Museum, Osaka). Of the extant scrolls, the first relates the celebrations on occasion of the birth of prince Atsunari (Atsuhira, later Emperor Go-Ichijō) in 1008 and the last those of the birth of Prince Atsunaga (later Emperor Go-Suzaku) in 1009. This difference in time indicates that the original emaki most likely consisted of more scrolls than exist today. ¹

The Diary of Lady Murasaki (紫式部日記, Murasaki Shikibu Nikki) records the daily life of the Heian era lady-in-waiting and writer, Lady Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji. Most likely written between 1008 and 1010, the largest portion consists of descriptive passages of the birth of Empress Shōshi's (Akiko) children (future Emperors Go-Ichijō and Go-Suzaku) and related festivities, with smaller vignettes describing life at the Imperial court and relations between other ladies-in-waiting and court writers such as Izumi Shikibu, Akazome Emon and Sei Shōnagon. It also gives a lively account of the regency of the powerful Fujiwara no Michinaga. Like the romantic novel Genji, the diary deals with emotions and human relationships, particularly with Murasaki Shikibu's constraints at the court of Akiko, and her loneliness and feelings of futility after her husband's death (in 1001). The author is critical of her contemporaries, the men for their discourteous ways (including Fujiwara no Michinaga) and the women for their inexperience and lack of education and will. The diary is considered a masterpiece of Nikki Bungaku. Emaki, which are long paper scrolls telling a story through texts and paintings, came to Japan through exchange with the Chinese Empire around the 6th century and spread widely among the Heian aristocracy. The subsequent Kamakura period was marked by internal strife and civil wars that fostered the rise of the warrior class. If the warriors of the bakufu preferred "quick-moving narrative scrolls" such as war tales or legends, the production of emaki at the Heian court subsisted. Pictures illustrating The Tale of Genji continued to be popular into the early Kamakura period and revived interest in the author, Murasaki Shikibu. ¹

Two elements are found in the illustrations of the emaki: people indoors engaging in activities typical of the aristocracy of the period, such as writing letters, playing instruments, exchanging poems or talking to each other; and the gardens outside their buildings. For this reason, Mason calls the people in the emaki "house bound". The leftward direction of scroll reading is reflected in the composition of paintings and pictures which may build to a climax from right to left; or a main event presented on the right may be followed by its after-effects to the left. Stylistically the emaki follows the principles of the onna-e genre of yamato-e and is in this respect similar to the Tale of Genji Scrolls (1120–1140) but differs from them in many other aspects. Typical for onna-e, the paintings depict life at the palace with a sense of nostalgia, timeless and very retained, but purely decorative elements such as landscapes and contemplative scenes are added. Illustrations are relatively short compared to emaki of war or folktales, which according to Mason, "heightens the symbolic quality of non-figural motifs". The painting technique of tsukuri-e ("built painting"), used mainly in emaki of the court in the 12th century, is also used here. It is done in three stages: a first sketch of the scene is made with Indian ink (probably by a master of the workshop), then the color is applied on the entire surface of the paper in a specific order, from large areas in the background to fine details. Finally, the contours are enhanced or revived in ink to emphasize the depth. ¹

The illustrations provide insight into life and festivities at the Heian Palace, which sometimes consisted of something as simple as games on the lake, although those might have been perceived differently at the time of manufacture. Like other picture scrolls on court life such as the Genji Monogatari Emaki or the Pillow Book Emaki (Makura no Sōshi Emaki) they provide valuable information on the architectural shinden-zukuri style (particularly on interiors) which is characterized by a mixture of Tang and traditional Japanese influences. ¹

It is thought that the emaki originally consisted of 10–12 scrolls. The ancestral heritage of the emaki before the Edo period (1603–1867) is not known, and an investigation conducted during the Meiji period (1868–1911) found that only four scrolls had survived, each 21.0 cm (8.3 in) high and about 4.5–5.4 m (15–18 ft) long. The owners and state of preservation of all four scrolls has since changed. The extant parts correspond to about 15 percent of the original diary and are not in sequence. They consist of 24 scenes of varying widths distributed among three scrolls, six single sheets and two hanging scrolls in six different locations: Fujita Art Museum, Gotoh Museum, Tokyo National Museum and three private collections. Each scroll begins with a text section and generally alternates scene descriptions with illustrations, ending with a painting. In two instances a long text section is split in two parts and the Hachisuka scroll has an accumulation of three illustrations unseparated by text, and an accumulation of two unseparated independent text sections. ¹

Chronologically the oldest scenes of the emaki, combined with some of the later anecdotes in the diary, are contained in the Hachisuka scroll. Named after its former owner, the Hachisuka clan, rulers of the Tokushima Domain in Awa Province, this scroll is privately owned. It consists of eight illustrations and seven text sections on 16 paper sheets. The long third text section is split in two parts and followed by three illustrations. The seventh text section immediately follows the sixth without a painting between the two. The full scroll is 537.5 cm (211.6 in) long and has been designated as Important Cultural Property. Scenes 1–5 correspond to a continuous part of the diary and are the oldest diary entries represented by any of the four extant emaki scrolls. Scenes 6 and 7 correspond to later diary entries and appear in the diary after several of the scenes described in the other three extant scrolls. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki is mid-13th century emaki, a Japanese picture scroll, inspired by the diary of Murasaki Shikibu, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²