Edo Period hanging scroll
- Gallery: Room 93
- Maker: Miyagawa Issho
- Culture: Edo Period
- Made in: Japan
- Date: 1752 (before)
- Object type: hanging scroll, painting
- Materials: paper
- Museum number: 1913,0501,0.346
- Museum: The British Museum
- Collection record: British Museum website
- Image © The Trustees of the British Museum, shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
Listen to the free audio guide
About this object
This is an Edo Period hanging scroll painted by Miyagawa Issho. You're looking at a lively scene from chapter 6 of Ise Monogatari, one of Japan’s oldest literary works. Two samurai run in opposite directions, each carrying a woman on their back across a landscape filled with red maples. In the distance, servants with lanterns search near a grand curtain bearing a noble family’s crest.
The women wear kinukazuki, outer robes typically used to conceal identity during outings. This unusual composition may allude to a dramatic story from Ise Monogatari, where a man abducts a young woman, only for her to be eaten by a monster later that night.
Executed in ink and color on paper, this piece showcases Miyagawa Issho’s distinctive style—with energetic movements and his own unique facial expressions. It was donated to the British Museum in 1913.
See it in person
Edo Period hanging scroll is on display in Room 93 at the British Museum on Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London — free to enter. Choose British Museum on audioguide.london and take a photo of it to hear this free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
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