Genji Kashiwagi

References the Kashiwagi chapter (Chapter 36) of Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, in which the young nobleman Kashiwagi conducts an illicit affair with Onna San no Miya, the Third Princess and Genji's wife, then sickens with guilt and dies. The print belongs to Saito's ten-volume mezzotint cycle on the Genji, produced between 1982 and 1991, in which each volume treats a chapter or character through intaglio rather than the woodblock medium associated with earlier Genji-e. Mezzotint's velvety dark grounds suit the chapter's mood of secret transgression and psychological burden, with Kashiwagi's figure modeled in tonal gradient from shadow toward burnished light. The series situates Heian literary themes within the European intaglio tradition and represents a sustained engagement with court literature uncommon in postwar Japanese printmaking.