Hahakigi (from In the Garden of Genji)
帚木
- Medium:
- Aquatint, deep etching, gold leaf
- Image courtesy of
- Hiroaki Miyayama Official Site — In the Garden of Genji
帚木
The second chapter of The Tale of Genji takes its title from the hahakigi, a tree of poetic legend said to be visible from a distance but to vanish on approach — a figure for the elusiveness of the woman Utsusemi, whose evasion of Genji structures the chapter, and a chapter largely occupied by the so-called rainy-night discussion in which young men classify women by type. Miyayama's plate for Hahakigi follows the visual logic established across the series: a flat decorative ground worked in gold leaf, intaglio passages of deep etching, and aquatint tonalities that introduce spatial recession only obliquely. The botanical reference — the broom-tree silhouette as emblematic carrier — anchors the composition to the chapter while preserving the abstracted, sign-like mode by which the cycle codes each volume. Within the arc of In the Garden of Genji, the sheet typifies Miyayama's strategy of compressing each chapter's literary content into a botanical or atmospheric distillation rather than pursuing narrative illustration.
![[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
Hahakigi (from In the Garden of Genji) (帚木) was created by Hiroaki Miyayama (宮山 広明).
Hahakigi (from In the Garden of Genji) depicts gardens and literary.
