Uji no Naka no Kimi and Niomiya (her husband)

Naka no Kimi is the second of the two Uji sisters in the closing chapters of The Tale of Genji; she becomes the wife of Niou (Niomiya), the grandson of Hikaru Genji, after the death of her elder sister Ōigimi. The pairing in this print's title indicates a double-figure composition — an iconographic departure from the more common single-figure Genji portraits, and a choice that brings the narrative tension of the Uji chapters into one image. Mokuhanga of double-figure literary subjects typically arrange the pair within a screened or curtained Heian interior, with attention to the asymmetry of male and female robes, the placement of a poem-card or fan as a narrative cue, and a [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) atmospheric ground. The print belongs to the Genji-themed cluster evident across several titles in Shusui's documented output. Without confirmed publisher or series information, the work is best understood as part of the broader twentieth-century engagement with classical literary subjects in woodblock form.