Scenes from the Tale of Ise

This work is one painting from a group of shikishi poem square format paintings thought to have been created as a joint work by Tawaraya Sotatsu and other artists in his studio. Today a total of 59 paintings from this group are known. This painting shows the Mizukagami, or watery mirror scene, in which a woman spends an entire night thinking of a man she cannot meet. She stares at her reflection in the water of her basin, and recites a poem. The poem says, loosely, that since no one could be as sunken by her thoughts as I am, my image must sink here too. A man happens to hear the woman’s lament, and he replies that he too is sunken in depression.