"Kogō" and "The Imperial Procession to Ōhara", from The Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari)

The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.[1]
With these elegiac lines—among the most widely quoted in Japanese literature—begins the Heike monogatari (The Tale of the Heike), the dramatic account of the changing fortunes and final collapse of the mighty Heike clan.
The brief period in which the Heike clan exerted control over the imperial court began and ended during Go-Shirakawa's reign of influence as retired emperor (1158–92). Their rise to power was the culmination of a series of skirmishes among three contending families—the Fujiwara, the Heike (Taira), and the Minamoto (Genji)—during the Hōgen (1156–58) and Heiji (1159–60) eras. Taira Kiyomori (1118–1181), patriarch of the Heike, emerged victorious, and by 1168 he had all but attained a position that no member of a military family had held before, that of de facto ruler of the court. In 1180, he managed to install his grandson, aged three, as Emperor Antoku (r. 1180–85). But Kiyomori's triumph was short-lived. That same year the Minamoto clan, led by Yoritomo, rallied to defeat him. In early 1185 at Dan'noura, at the mouth of the Inland Sea, Yoritomo's army routed the Heike forces, and the entire clan—including the child-emperor Antoku—perished in the sea. Not long after, in 1192, Yoritomo became the first shogun of Japan (r. 1192–99).
Stories of the Heike's meteoric rise and calamitous fall were first transmitted orally, by blind minstrels, and many years passed before they were written down. The final version took shape about the middle of the thirteenth century, after many revisions by a number of writers, nobles as well as monks. The Heike monogatari ranks as Japan's finest epic, on the same level as the Genji monogatari, the pinnacle of classical romantic narrative.
The tale of the Heike differs from the fictional story of Prince Genji in that it is a historical chronicle, a record of battles, accounts of brave deeds and occasional acts of cowardice, interspersed with tragic tales of love. Its twelve chapters and epilogue are written in crisp, rhythmic phrases, and it is easy to understand why recitation of the text became so popular at social gatherings. The Heike narrative also served as a model for later military tales and inspired many theatrical works.
Because the tale includes an enormous number of characters and incidents and has no protagonist, early attempts to illustrate the entire narrative were probably unsuccessful. The earliest known reference to a Heike painting dates to 1438.[2] A series of forty books of Heike paintings is described as having been in the Imperial Collection.[3] And three handscrolls of what is believed to have been an eight-scroll set attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu (fl. 1469–1523) are extant.[4] The largest surviving complete set, in the Hayashibara Museum of Art, Okayama, dates to the eighteenth century and consists of thirty-six scrolls.[5] Other extensive groups of Heike pictures, also dating to the eighteenth century, are painted on small fans.[6]
A different type of Heike-related illustrated hand scroll dates to a much earlier period and focuses on individual characters from the narrative. One example from the late thirteenth century recounts the story of Lord Takafusa's unrequited love for Lady Kogō, the subject of the right screen in the Burke Collection.[7] More commonly chosen for depiction on Heike screens are scenes of combat and the episode shown on the left screen in the present pair—the meeting at Ōhara between Go-Shirakawa and Kenreimon'in, Kiyomori's daughter and the mother of Antoku, after the debacle at Dan'noura.[8]
The story of Lady Kogō , recounted in chapter 6, is one of the many tragedies caused by Kiyomori's overriding ambition to marry his daughters into the imperial family so that one of their offspring would become emperor, giving him—as grandfather of the ruler—even more political power. Kogō, a renowned beauty and an accomplished koto player, became lady-in-waiting to Kenreimon 'in, married to Emperor Takakura (r. 1168–80). Kogō soon attracted the attention of Lord Takafusa, who was married to another daughter of Kiyomori. Takafusa was forced to renounce his love when the emperor became infatuated with Kogō. The love triangle involving both his sons-in-law infuriated Kiyomori, and Kogō was banished from the court. One autumn evening when the full moon was out, the despondent Takakura sent his retainer Nakakuni to search for the young woman. His attention drawn by the sound of Kogō's music, Nakakuni found her at last, in the area of Saga, northwest of Kyoto. Kogō finally agreed to return to the capital, where for a time she lived in secret and gave birth to a baby girl. Her whereabouts were eventually discovered by the vindictive Kiyomori, who forced her to become a nun. She died not long after, at the age of twenty-three.
The right screen contrasts with its companion in many respects. The season is autumn and the clay is drawing to a close. The composition, which opens out toward the Ōi River and is pervaded by a melancholy lyricism, is relatively empty of human figures. While the left screen closely follows details given in the Heike text for the natural setting, the right screen relies on the artist's own invention. The text of this episode says little about the setting, referring only to the full moon and a pair of stags. The image in the third panel from the right, of women fulling cloth, also alludes to autumn. In the sixth panel, two cormorant fishermen are seen, as are two monks and an acolyte, who must be from Hōrinji, across the river; both groups provide visual references to place-names given in the text.
Nakakuni appears twice with his retinue in this screen. Thinking that Kogō may be found near Hōrinji, he stops (in the fourth panel) at the foot of the bridge, and (at the extreme right) he arrives at Kogō's hiding place and tries to persuade her attendant to admit him. Kogō is seen within, playing the koto.
The left screen depicts events from the "Kanjō no maki" (The Initiate's Chapter), actually an epilogue that describes Go-Shirakawa's unannounced visit to Ōhara. The bereaved mother, Kenreimon'in, has retired to a nunnery there after having been rescued by Minamoto soldiers when she threw herself into the Inland Sea with the other members of her family. Summer is just beginning in the quiet mountain retreat: "Young grasses burgeoned in the courtyard, green willow branches tangled in the wind ... The wisteria clinging to the islet pines had put forth purple flowers."[9]
In the third panel from the right, the ex-empress and her attendant, dressed in the gray-and-black habit of Buddhist nuns, may be seen walking in the hills, where they gather flowers. A steep mountain path descends to the nunnery. There, the retired emperor stands on the veranda of a run-down hut and a crowd of followers fills the narrow courtyard. In keeping with the text—"By way of visitors, there were only the cries of monkeys ... and the sounds of woodcutters' axes"[10]—the painting includes a pair of monkeys (at the top of the fourth panel) and an old man cutting wood (at the top of the sixth).
The Ōhara and Kogō episodes were rarely paired on folding screens. The only other known example of this combination has been tentatively identified as the work of Hasegawa Kyūzō (1568-1593), eldest son of the famous Tōhaku (1539–1610).[11] The arrangement of pictorial elements in the Burke Kogō screen closely resembles the image painted by Kyūzō. Stylistically, however, the work can be attributed to a Tosa artist. Characteristic of that school are the mountains and hills with gentle, rounded profiles, the ink outlines on rocks, the delineation of human figures with thin, gentle brushlines, and the large trees silhouetted against the background as two-dimensional forms. Moreover, the delicacy and elegance of autumn grasses and flowers are reminiscent of the miniature plant motifs in many Genji paintings by Tosa masters (cat. nos. 81, 82).[12] Such stylistic features also suggest that this pair of screens were painted at the beginning of the Edo period, during the first half of the seventeenth century.
[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]
[1] Tale of the Heike 1988 ,p. 23.
[2] Kannon gyoki, entries for the eighth, tenth, thirteenth, and sixteenth days, sixth month, tenth year of the Eikyō era (1438). See Kanmon gyoki 1944.
[3] Ibid., entry for the sixth month, twenty-sixth day, of the same year.
[4] Kurokawa Harumura 1885–1901, vol. 10, pp. 27–28; and Miyajima Shin'ichi 1986, fig. 54.
[5] Komatsu Shigemi 1994–95.
[6] These sets, of sixty fans each and painted in the eighteenth century, are in the New Institute of Fine Arts, Tokyo, and the Gene Zema collection, Seattle. Thirty fans of a similar group of sixty are in the Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin.
[7] Murase 19833, no.11 .
[8] Murakami Genzō 1975, p. 12.
[9] Tale of the Heike 1988, p. 430.
[10] Ibid., p. 431.
[11] Sale catalogue, Yamanaka and Company 1939, no. 174.
[12] Miyajima Shin'ichi (1986, pp. 76–77) believes that Tosa Mitsuyoshi was the first artist to pair the Ōhara and Kogō episodes, but this cannot be verified.

Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (until 2015; donated to MMA)

Tokyo National Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," May 21, 1985–June 30, 1985.

Ishikawa Prefectural Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," July 13, 1985–August 11, 1985.

Nagoya City Art Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," August 17, 1985–September 23, 1985.

Atami. MOA Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," September 29, 1985–October 27, 1985.

Hamamatsu City Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," November 12, 1985–December 1, 1985.

New York. Asia Society. "Art of Japan: Selections from the Burke Collection, pts. I and II," October 2, 1986–February 22, 1987.

New Haven. Yale University Art Gallery. "Bright Color, Bold Ink: Diversity in Momoyama Art," February 23, 1988–April 4, 1988.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Seasonal Pleasures in Japanese Art (Part One)," October 12, 1995–April 28, 1996.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.

Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," July 5, 2005–August 19, 2005.

Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 4, 2005–December 11, 2005.

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," January 24, 2006–March 5, 2006.

Miho Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 15, 2006–June 11, 2006.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Storytelling in Japanese Art," November 19, 2011–May 6, 2012.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 20, 2015–May 14, 2017.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Kyoto: Capital of Artistic Imagination," July 24, 2019–January 31, 2021.

Tsuji Nobuo 辻惟雄, Mary Griggs Burke, Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha 日本経済新聞社, and Gifu-ken Bijutsukan 岐阜県美術館. Nyūyōku Bāku korekushon-ten: Nihon no bi sanzennen no kagayaki ニューヨーク・バーク・コレクション展 : 日本の美三千年の輝き(Enduring legacy of Japanese art: The Mary Griggs Burke collection). Exh. cat. [Tokyo]: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2005, cat. no. 73.

Watanabe, Masako. Storytelling in Japanese Art. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011, pp. 28–29, fig. 14.

Murase, Miyeko, Il Kim, Shi-yee Liu, Gratia Williams Nakahashi, Stephanie Wada, Soyoung Lee, and David Sensabaugh. Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Vol. 1, Japanese Paintings, Printed Works, Calligraphy. [New York]: Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, [2013], p. 179, cat. no. 207.