Chapter 8 Japan 325fragments that are now in the Tokugawa and Goto Museums. The artists
sought to portray the most emotionally intense moments—the moment the
Reizei emperor confronts Genji, having just learned Genji is his father, or the
moment Genji’s wife is prostrate on the tatami, unable to tell her father, the
retired emperor, the truth of her child by Kashiwagi or to face her husband
Genji. We view these intense scenes from surprising angles, often looking
down into rooms with their roofs removed, always with strong diagonal lines
representing the architecture of interiors and people separated by walls and
screens. Emotional turbulence is expressed by ribbons hanging in disarray and
by the sharp tilt of the composition itself (Baker 1984).Warrior Culture in Feudal Japan
Attention must turn to the provinces in order to understand Japan from the
twelfth century onward. This was the realm of the Japanese peasant and a
landed class of elite families, many of them provincial branches of great court
families. The Taiho Reforms imposed on this old system a new system of pro-
vincial governors (zuryo) whose job it was to raise income for the imperial gov-
ernment. They fulfilled this responsibility, in many cases so rapaciously, and
were themselves so greedy to acquire land however they could, that there was aLady Murasaki Shikibu was
lady-in-waiting to Empress Shoki,
where she was an insider to the
seductions, heartbreaks, styles, and
tastes of the Heian court. Descended
from poets, she wrote The Tale of Genji
from her retreat at Lake Biwa, where
she is often portrayed receiving
inspiration from the moon.