Across this pair of screens, The Tale of Genji unfolds in dozens of small scenes, beginning with Kiritsubo on the right-hand screen and continuing through to the final chapter, Yume no Ukihashi, on the left. Courtly interiors, gardens, journeys and gatherings emerge between broad banks of gold cloud. The arrangement invites the eye to wander, discovering one episode and then another.

Much of the pleasure lies in the details: a visitor approaching a veranda, figures gathered around a carriage, or a room glimpsed through an open screen. The green floors and richly patterned robes give each scene its own character, while the gold clouds hold the many episodes together across the twelve panels.

The screens bear the inscription Fujiwara Ujinobu hitsu (“painted by Fujiwara Ujinobu”) and the name Kanō Daigaku, by which Kanō Ujinobu (1616–1669) was also known. A painter in the service of the Tokugawa shogunate, Ujinobu brings both a sense of scale and a close attention to human gesture to this telling of Genji’s story.