Autumn Moon at Ishiyama (Ishiyama no aki no tsuki), No. 8 from the series "Eight Views of Omi"

Number eight from Shigenaga's Eight Views of Omi (Omi hakkei) series, this hosoban urushi-e in the Art Institute of Chicago depicts the canonical theme of the autumn moon viewed from Ishiyama-dera, the Tendai temple on the shore of Lake Biwa where, according to legend, Murasaki Shikibu conceived The Tale of Genji while watching the moon. The Eight Views of Omi adapted the Chinese Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers to a Japanese setting, replacing the continental landscape with eight specific sites around Lake Biwa, and the series became one of the foundational templates for Japanese landscape iconography. Shigenaga's treatment, like the others in his series, fuses bijin-ga with topographic association: a beauty viewing the moon at Ishiyama is at once a real moment and a literary citation of Murasaki Shikibu. The urushi-e technique applies hand-brushed lacquer ink and beni to enhance the printed keyblock, giving the night sky and dark robes a satin sheen impossible in pure print. The series is one of Shigenaga's most ambitious commercial projects and demonstrates his ability to translate the Chinese eight-views convention into something distinctly Japanese and distinctly Edo.