Momiji-no-ga (from In the Garden of Genji)

The seventh chapter centers on the autumn excursion at which Genji performs the Seigaiha — the Blue Sea Waves dance — during a festival staged for the retired emperor. The chapter's title, which can be read as viewing the autumn leaves, names both the festival and the visual register of crimson maples that frames the courtly scene. Miyayama's print for the chapter activates this autumnal iconography: maple leaves rendered in deep etching, aquatint passages giving tonal weight to the foliage, and gold leaf applied across the ground, the gilded surface drawing on the screen-painting tradition's use of background gold to signal both season and atmosphere. The treatment of red maple as central motif distinguishes the sheet from the predominantly floral plates in the cycle and aligns with the chapter's autumn coding. Within In the Garden of Genji, Momiji-no-ga represents Miyayama's broader use of seasonal markers — alongside botanical emblems — to encode each chapter of the romance in a discrete pictorial unit.