Kiritsubo (from In the Garden of Genji)
桐壺
- Medium:
- Aquatint, deep etching, gold leaf
- Image courtesy of
- Hiroaki Miyayama Official Site — In the Garden of Genji
桐壺
The opening chapter of The Tale of Genji takes its name from the Kiritsubo, the paulownia courtyard residence of the emperor's favored consort and Genji's mother, whose decline and death from the cruelty of jealous rivals frame the prince's origin. Miyayama's sheet for this chapter, executed in his characteristic combination of deep etching, aquatint, and applied gold leaf, places the paulownia (kiri) as its central botanical motif — a tree whose Heian usage signaled imperial dignity and, by association, the consort herself. The flat gilded ground recalls the kirikane and applied-gold conventions of medieval Genji-e and the decorative grounds of Edo-period byōbu, establishing the surface as ornamental rather than illusionistic, while etched contour and aquatint tonality introduce textural variation that distinguishes the contemporary intaglio sheet from its painted antecedents. As the inaugural plate of In the Garden of Genji, the print sets out the iconographic and material vocabulary that Miyayama would extend across the cycle's fifty-four sheets.
![[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
Kiritsubo (from In the Garden of Genji) (桐壺) was created by Hiroaki Miyayama (宮山 広明).
Kiritsubo (from In the Garden of Genji) depicts gardens and literary.
