Scattered Fans and Uji Bridge

The Japanese have painted on paper folding fans since at least the twelfth century. No other culture prizes fans as highly. They are indispensable for both men and women, not only for their functional role, but also as an intimate surface for painting and poetry and as an emblem of elegance. By the fifteenth century, artists began to arrange fans on folding screens. Here, in a luxury commission, a dazzling array over thirty-five folding fans—not counting many shown closed—drift under and around the iconic Uji Bridge in southern Kyoto, seeming to float on the river. The fans create a bold, modernist abstraction. The theme of Uji Bridge and willow trees evokes the romance and melodrama of the golden age of The Tale of Genji. Uji serves as the setting for the last ten chapters of tale, ending with “The Bridge of Dreams.” Each screen includes one fan showing courtiers from that rarified world performing music or reading poetry.
In this luxury commissions, fans are painted with emblems of good fortune and longevity (long-tailed tortoises, a crane improbably nesting with its chicks in a tree, red spiny lobsters) and with seasonal imagery. Spring and summer are on the left screen (plum and cherry blossoms, bamboo shoots, peonies), while autumnal imagery is prevalent on the right (chestnuts, chrysanthemums, maple leaves, and a snow-capped Mount Fuji). Uji Bridge screens typically show openwork, domed-shape bamboo baskets (jakago, literally, “snake basket”) filled with rocks to shore up the embankment and prevent soil erosion. Here, the jakago appear in a fan on the right screen, third panel from the right.