Introduction

This pair of screens depicting the Tale of Genji is another unsigned work that presents a perspective impossible in real life. The people in the residence’s rooms can be seen from above through gold leaf clouds, as there aren’t any roofs. Although this point of view may seem familiar to us because we are accustomed to technology such as Google Street View, in the seventeenth century, only the gods (or perhaps birds) could be imagined to enjoy such a perspective.

Mimetic art, painting things to make them look as they appear in reality, relies on rules such as single point perspective and representations of light sources and shadows to convincingly portray a specific time and realistic physical space. Edo artists did not strive to paint the world as human beings see it, so they were neither concerned with mimesis nor bound by its rules.

Instead of single point perspective, folding screens (byōbu) provide multiple points of perspective, with each vantage revealing a different impression of the work. Without light sources or shadows, the art is not tied to a specific time or place. Art depicting such imaginary spaces and viewed from multiple perspectives is best appreciated through slow, close looking, so viewers can appreciate the full range of insights such art can reveal.