紫式部日记绘卷

The Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki (紫式部日記絵巻) is a mid-13th century emaki (Japanese picture scroll) inspired by the private diary (nikki) of Murasaki Shikibu, lady-in-waiting at the 10th–11th century Heian court and author of The Tale of Genji. This emaki belongs to the classical style of Japanese painting known as yamato-e, and revives the iconography of the Heian period.

Today there remain four paper scrolls of the emaki in varying condition, and stored in different collections: Hachisuka, Matsudaira, Hinohara scrolls (Tokyo), and Fujita scroll (Fujita Art Museum, Osaka). Of the extant scrolls, the first relates the celebrations on occasion of the birth of prince Atsunari (Atsuhira, later Emperor Go-Ichijō) in 1008 and the last those of the birth of Prince Atsunaga (later Emperor Go-Suzaku) in 1009. This difference in time indicates that the original emaki most likely consisted of more scrolls than exist today.

Description

The Diary of Lady Murasaki (紫式部日記, Murasaki Shikibu Nikki) records the daily life of the Heian era lady-in-waiting and writer, Lady Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji. Most likely written between 1008 and 1010, the largest portion consists of descriptive passages of the birth of Empress Shōshi's (Akiko) children (future Emperors Go-Ichijō and Go-Suzaku) and related festivities, with smaller vignettes describing life at the Imperial court and relations between other ladies-in-waiting and court writers such as Izumi Shikibu, Akazome Emon and Sei Shōnagon. It also gives a lively account of the regency of the powerful Fujiwara no Michinaga. Like the romantic novel Genji, the diary deals with emotions and human relationships, particularly with Murasaki Shikibu's constraints at the court of Akiko, and her loneliness and feelings of futility after her husband's death (in 1001). The author is critical of her contemporaries, the men for their discourteous ways (including Fujiwara no Michinaga) and the women for their inexperience and lack of education and will. The diary is considered a masterpiece of Nikki Bungaku.

Emaki, which are long paper scrolls telling a story through texts and paintings, came to Japan through exchange with the Chinese Empire around the 6th century and spread widely among the Heian aristocracy. The subsequent Kamakura period was marked by internal strife and civil wars that fostered the rise of the warrior class. If the warriors of the bakufu preferred "quick-moving narrative scrolls" such as war tales or legends, the production of emaki at the Heian court subsisted. Pictures illustrating The Tale of Genji continued to be popular into the early Kamakura period and revived interest in the author, Murasaki Shikibu. Towards the end of the 13th century, a renewed interest in the refined culture of the Heian period led some artists to return to painting styles of the Imperial Court; many emaki were produced during this period.

The Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki belongs to this golden age of the emaki and according to Penelope Mason "may be regarded as one of the finest extant examples of prose-poetry narrative illustration from the Kamakura period". It was created about 200 years after the diary was written, in the mid-13th century. It transcribes the solitude and the observations of palace life from the diary but adds to the text a certain nostalgia for the glorious past of the Heian court which is typical for the 13th century, giving an overall feeling of "lost golden age", according to Mason, even during happy events such as parties. The explanatory notes (or captions), i.e. the non-painting part, show little textual deviations from the diary.

An emaki of Murasaki Shikibu's diary is mentioned in the Meigetsuki ("Record of the clean moon"), the diary of the poet and scholar Fujiwara no Teika. According to this document, in 1233 several aristocrats close to cloistered Emperor Go-Horikawa planned to create a new emaki of The Tale of Genji (after the 12th century Genji Monogatari Emaki, the best known of these works), accompanied by another of Murasaki's diary. However, there is no conclusive evidence that the extant scrolls correspond to those mentioned by Fujiwara no Teika, even though the consistency of manufacturing dates suggests that this is the case. The paintings of the emaki have been attributed to the painter Fujiwara Nobuzane and the captions to the excellent calligrapher Gokyōgoku (後京極良経; 1169–1206), despite definitive evidence.

Style and composition

Two elements are found in the illustrations of the emaki: people indoors engaging in activities typical of the aristocracy of the period, such as writing letters, playing instruments, exchanging poems or talking to each other; and the gardens outside their buildings. For this reason, Mason calls the people in the emaki "house bound". The leftward direction of scroll reading is reflected in the composition of paintings and pictures which may build to a climax from right to left; or a main event presented on the right may be followed by its after-effects to the left. Stylistically the emaki follows the principles of the onna-e genre of yamato-e and is in this respect similar to the Tale of Genji Scrolls (1120–1140) but differs from them in many other aspects. Typical for onna-e, the paintings depict life at the palace with a sense of nostalgia, timeless and very retained, but purely decorative elements such as landscapes and contemplative scenes are added. Illustrations are relatively short compared to emaki of war or folktales, which according to Mason, "heightens the symbolic quality of non-figural motifs".

The painting technique of tsukuri-e ("built painting"), used mainly in emaki of the court in the 12th century, is also used here. It is done in three stages: a first sketch of the scene is made with Indian ink (probably by a master of the workshop), then the color is applied on the entire surface of the paper in a specific order, from large areas in the background to fine details. Finally, the contours are enhanced or revived in ink to emphasize the depth.……

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。