Yugao

The title yūgao (夕顔) refers both to the moonflower — a white-blossomed evening vine — and to the Genji heroine of the same name, a young woman who dies under mysterious circumstances in the fourth chapter of Murasaki Shikibu's eleventh-century novel. Within Shusui's apparent output, several titles cluster around scenes from The Tale of Genji, suggesting this print belongs to a literary series rather than a botanical study. Mokuhanga depicting Yugao characteristically pair the blossoming vine with restrained figural elements — a screened veranda, a fan, a glimpse of robe — and rely on bokashi gradations to evoke the twilight setting central to the chapter's narrative. Pigment registers tend toward muted indigos and pale inks at evening, with reserved white passages for the flowers themselves printed without outline. The absence of confirmed dates for Shusui places this work within the broader twentieth-century revival of classical literary subjects in woodblock form.