For centuries, works of literature have inspired works of visual art in Japan.

Works such as the 10th-century melange of poetic and narrative writing TheTales of Ise (Ise monogatari) or the Tales of Genshi (Genshi monogatari), ascribed to a lady of the court from around the year 1000, have had a major influence on Japanese art, as have well-known poems, which were often canonised through their inclusion in anthologies created at the behest of the emperor. These visual representations often focus on dramatic highpoints in the plots or on scenes that are particularly compelling in terms of the psychology behind them or the motifs they depict. Over the centuries, individual pictorial elements and compositions were then copied countless times, varied, and in some cases even parodied.

This display made up of items from the museum’s own holdings gathers together a number of examples of pictorial adaptations of literary material in painting and the graphic arts, as well as portraits of authors and poets, of which various versions have likewise been preserved. The production of variations on popular themes and motifs is not a phenomenon that is limited to the field of literary illustration, but can also be found in depictions of nature and people. It is also a particularly prominent feature of sacred images, which adhere to largely fixed compositional conventions.

The significance of copying compositions once they have been formulated is hinted at in a collection of fan illustrations painted on a pair of folding screens, which display the various motifs in two different versions. At the very least, the juxtaposition of two lacquered objects gives a hint of the play of variations between object forms and illustrative designs. 

A special presentation by the Museum für Asiatische Kunst of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, on display within the permanent exhibition Ethnological Collections and Asian Art at the Humboldt Forum, in room 318, “Art in Japan”.