Sakaki (from In the Garden of Genji)

賢木

Medium:: Aquatint, deep etching, gold leaf
Image courtesy of: Hiroaki Miyayama Official Site — In the Garden of Genji

Description

The tenth chapter draws its name from the sakaki, the evergreen used in Shinto ritual; the chapter's central scene takes place at the Nonomiya shrine where Genji visits the Rokujo Lady before her departure for Ise. Miyayama's print likely centres on a sakaki branch or its small berry-like fruit, possibly paired with the simple torii or shimenawa rope of the shrine setting. The rich blacks of deep etching are well suited to the chapter's autumnal mood and Shinto austerity, while burnished gold leaf provides the luminous ground against which the dark vegetation reads. Across the In the Garden of Genji series Miyayama tends to assign each chapter a single botanical or ritual emblem, a strategy that makes the cycle as much a contemporary herbarium of Heian poetics as a literary illustration project.