- Scroll format for illustrated narratives
- Cinematic - temporal component which can be controlled by both reader (unrolling) and artist (pacing of narrative)
- Including 'different time same scene' (iji dozu) where 2 different moments are shown side by side
- Ko-e (short story small scrolls)
- Tale of the Rat (Nezumi soshi) and Chrysanthemum Spirit (Kiku no sei monogatari)
- Usually 15cm high (half size of standard scroll)
- Text-image-text-image: condensed impact
- Emerged in C14 but peaked C15-16
- Illustrates a short story from a collection - anticipating a modern viewing/reading experience as individual engagement
- Single protagonist, plot-driven, epiphanic ending
- Didactic - for young readers as hobby
- Lent out and exchanged among peers
Tale of the Rat (C16) - 3 paintings
- Unroll so you only see 1 portion at a time - shoulder-width, held in hands
- Fluid text - easy to read (kana and kanji)
- Overlaps with painting section at the start - dreamlike introduction
- Opens with gate illustration: beckons reader into another world
- Poor household: no roof, dilapidated
- Daughter of nun wants/needs to be married - makes a wish
- Painting supplements text: extra information
- Woman pounding cloth - allusion to noh theatre motif of woman beckoning for lost husband, full of longing = indicates theme
- Sleeping dog = peaceful household
- Straw mat = presages new visitor
- Architecture plays important framing role for characters, themes, setting
- Proscenium: stage set for story
- Young courtier appears in front of daughter
- Autumn scene: poetic
- Section 2: Courtier continues visits, enriches household and provides luxurious objects, food, repairs
- Frontal view of architecture = stability of household
- Section 3: sequence showing revelation of cat eating rat, to the sadness of the women who feel that it is Karma/destiny
- Temporal rhythm: slow/poetic intro --> dramatic ending, then moment of reflection (Buddhist: becoming aware of illusory nature of world)
- Final scene's architecture is intimate, allowing visceral engagement
Comparing ko-e
- Rat: text/image divided page by page, with professional art
- Chrysanthemum: looser, calligraphy and art more fluid, uses juxtaposition of image/text
- Both about women's encounters with non-human men - both didactic
- Chrysanthemum is about imperial ideology and importance of perpetuating aristocratic lineage
The Chrysanthemum Spirit
- Woman becomes lovers with spirit of the chrysanthemum but he is plucked for the emperor
- Dies giving birth to their child, but daughter becomes consort to emperor and has prosperous children
- In painting, flowers in garden are diverse and large, swaying
- All important for evoking in poetry - primer for flowers for youths
- No buildings - relationships told/visualised interpersonally
- Metamorphosis of chrysanthemum spirit is evident visually to the reader, though the character does not know
- Birthing scene unusual as it actually shows baby emerging from her robe - more explicit, hints at didactic nature of scroll
- Ends on a note of regeneration - descendants, perpetuation of imperial line/lineage in general.
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