A Collection of Japanese Paintings (Yamato e-zukushi)

Dated 1680 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago, A Collection of Japanese Paintings (Yamato e-zukushi) is one of Moronobu's most ambitious book projects, a woodblock-printed compendium that translates the painted tradition of yamato-e into the popular medium of the ehon. The yamato-e style, with its origins in courtly Heian narrative painting, was Moronobu's deepest pictorial inheritance, transmitted to him through his training in the Tosa school, and this book represents his explicit effort to introduce the classical narrative subjects of yamato-e to the broader Edo readership through woodblock reproduction. Printed in sumizuri-e, the single-block black-ink technique, the book demonstrates how Moronobu adapted the lyrical contour lines of yamato-e brush painting to the more linear, graphic logic of woodblock printing. The book's structure as a zukushi, an exhaustive collection, allowed him to range across literary classics, seasonal scenes, court ceremonies, and famous places. Yamato e-zukushi sits at the conceptual heart of Moronobu's project: the deliberate translation of elite painting traditions into a popular, replicable, commercial medium, the founding move of ukiyo-e as a category.