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Scenes from the Tale of Ise

Tawaraya Sōtatsu1600

Suntory Museum of Art

Suntory Museum of Art
Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan

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.

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  • Title: Scenes from the Tale of Ise
  • Creator: Attributed to Tawaraya Sotatsu (Calligraphy by Konoe Hisatsugu)
  • Date Created: 1600
  • Location Created: Japan
  • Physical Dimensions: w215 x h252 cm
  • Object Title (Japanese): 伊勢物語図色紙 水鏡
  • Object Date (English): Edo period (17th century)
  • Category (Japanese): 絵画
  • Artist Name (Japanese): 画/伝 俵屋宗達 書/近衛尚嗣
  • Type: Painting
  • Rights: Suntory Museum of Art, Suntory Museum of Art
Suntory Museum of Art

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