Eawase (from In the Garden of Genji)
絵合
- Medium:
- Aquatint, deep etching, gold leaf
- Image courtesy of
- Hiroaki Miyayama Official Site — In the Garden of Genji
絵合
Eawase, "A Picture Contest," is the seventeenth chapter of Murasaki Shikibu's Genji monogatari, in which two factions at court vie before the Reizei emperor by presenting paired paintings for judgment. Miyayama's print belongs to the long-running In the Garden of Genji series, in which each of the fifty-four chapters yields a discrete plate. Rather than narrating the chapter's events, the image compresses its mood and material referents — unrolled handscrolls, lacquered cases, the aesthetics of court connoisseurship — into a flattened, emblematic composition. Deep etching produces the raised plate-mark and embossed contours characteristic of Miyayama's intaglio process; aquatint generates the tonal grounds; and applied gold leaf, burnished into the plate impression, supplies a reflective decorative field that recalls the gilt screens (kinpaku byōbu) of the Momoyama and Edo periods. The resulting surface aligns Miyayama with the rinpa decorative lineage rather than with the print traditions of [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) or sōsaku-hanga, situating his Genji series as a contemporary intaglio response to the painted yamato-e tradition.
![[Garden of] Taj Mahal, No. 1 (Taji Maharu no niwa, dai ichi) by Hiroshi Yoshida](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/230993a7-d4f0-c979-c267-127d48e1ef1c/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
Taji Maharu no niwa, dai ichi
1931
Color woodblock print; oban
January 1938
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
1938
Color woodblock print; oban
10/70, 1966
Woodblock print
Eawase (from In the Garden of Genji) (絵合) was created by Hiroaki Miyayama (宮山 広明).
Eawase (from In the Garden of Genji) depicts gardens and literary.
