The Third Princess

The Third Princess, or Onna San no Miya, is a well-known character from Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji. She is most often depicted in the moment when her pet cat pulls aside a bamboo blind, accidentally revealing her presence to the courtier Kashiwagi — an episode that drives the tragic plotline of Genji's later chapters. Prints on this theme typically show a young noblewoman in many-layered junihitoe robes, sometimes accompanied by the cat at her feet. This subject belongs to the Genji-e (Genji picture) tradition that printmakers continued to revisit through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As with other works attributed to Taki Shusui, archival evidence about printing methods, publisher, and edition is limited; the print likely follows the standard mokuhanga workflow of carved cherrywood blocks, [baren](/glossary/baren)-applied pigments on [washi](/glossary/washi), and a small number of impressions hand-pulled by a printer.