Tale of the Heike and a Lute Next to a Standing Screen

Tale of the Heike and a Lute Next to a Standing Screen is a Keisai Eisen surimono in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated to circa 1820. The composition is built entirely from objects: a bound copy of the Heike monogatari, the great medieval war chronicle whose recitation by blind biwa hoshi shaped Edo's literary imagination; a biwa lute leaning against the binding; and a low folding screen rising behind both, its painted surface providing pictorial counterpoint. Eisen treats the assembly as a portrait of cultivated leisure: the book embodies classical learning, the instrument embodies the performance tradition that brought that learning into the room, and the screen embodies the visual luxury that surrounds both. The artist arranges the elements with the slightly elevated viewpoint typical of Edo ukiyo-e still lifes, allowing the screen, lute, and book each to read clearly while overlapping enough to suggest their domestic intimacy. The surimono's surface is precisely the kind of pleasure such an arrangement demands: metallic pigments and karazuri embossing pick out the lute's lacquered face and pegs, while the painted screen behind it is rendered in graded bokashi color that mimics the look of paint on silk. Kyoka verses distributed across the upper field would have linked the scene to the Heike's tragic narratives and to the poetic identities of the coterie that commissioned the print. Although Eisen's broader reputation rests on his bijin-ga, this sheet shows the strict, emblematic mode he could deploy when invited into the deluxe surimono tradition of late-Edo ukiyo-e, and the print survives in Chicago as a particularly distilled example of the form.