Sumiyoshi Monogatari Emaki

• Illustration — The two lovers are finally reunited • Illustration — The marriage ceremony The emakimono illustrates the Sumiyoshi Monogatari, a famous story of the 10th century, in which a young woman, the daughter of a Chūnagon (Middle Counselor), runs away from home to escape abuse from her stepmother. She falls in love with a minor captain and becomes engaged to him. Her stepmother, however, compels the minor captain to marry her own daughter instead. She also prevents the young woman from serving at the palace or marrying a watchman. When the young woman discovers the truth, she escapes to the Sumiyoshi Grand Shrine. Later, the minor captain, who has since been promoted to major captain, is taken to the shrine by a mystical dream with the help of Kannon. He and the young woman get married and live happily ever after, while the stepmother ends her life in poverty and disgrace. The story dates from the 10th century in the Heian period, but is known only from a 12th-century copy. The original tenth-century tale is attributed to the poet Sone no Yoshitada; its influence was such that the "Tamakatsura" chapter of the Genji Monogatari was written with it in mind, and later otogizōshi narratives commonly modelled themselves on its style.

The Sumiyoshi Monogatari Emaki was created in the Yamato-e painting style. Although it belongs to the genre of the illustrations of novels of the court (monogatari), it presents a pictorial style relatively different from other works on this theme such as the Genji Monogatari Emaki. Indeed, the scroll depicts the story as a long painting in which several scenes follow one another without clear transition and without any textual interruption, an approach rarely used for monogatari. That depiction aims to reflect the evolution of time, so that some characters appear several times in the same scene to illustrate successive phases of the story. Moreover, to represent the interior scenes, the painter did not use the classical technique of fukinuki yatai, consisting of removing the roof to show the parts of a building from an elevated a point of view; on the contrary, the scroll adopts a lower point of view and introduces interiors through openings such as windows, doors or sliding panels. The Sumiyoshi Monogatari Emaki therefore testifies to the evolution of the paintings of the court during the Kamakura period, the painters willingly deviating from the old conventions exhibited especially in the Genji Monogatari Emaki (the oldest preserved emakimono of the court).

The oldest preserved emakimono illustrating the Sumiyoshi Monogatari dates from the end of 13th century or the beginning of the 14th century, although earlier illustrations have existed in the past. That emakimono today is a single handscroll measuring, without text, but four fragments were detached at an unknown date (subsequent to 1848) and mounted as kakemono (hanging scrolls). The Tokyo National Museum holds the handscroll and one of the detached sections. Another section is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (since 2015); the rest belong to individuals. There is also a single fragment of the original text, of only three lines.