Musashino

Gold clouds fill the upper part of the screens, an area of malachite green indicates the ground in the lower section, and the surface of the screen itself is used for the central portion. Across this surface, autumn grasses and flowers are depicted against a background of Mt. Fuji and a full moon. It is likely that the work was inspired by the anonymous poem that describes the moon “appearing out of the grasses and sinking into the grasses” as it rises and sets on the plains of Musashino. The composition, with its tripartite division into horizontal layers of gold, plain paper, and malachite green, and its juxtaposition of the straight lines of the pampas grass and the curvilinear forms of the chrysanthemums, Japanese bush clover and Chinese bellflowers, was quite innovative for the time. The success of this design, with its unexpected placement of the full moon, inspired a number of similar screen compositions.