Ariwara no Narihira's Journey East

Sukoku Ko · late 18th century

Medium

One of a pair of hanging scrolls (with 1992.172); Ink and color on silk

Original size

124 × 39 cm (48 7/8 × 15 3/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

This delicate hanging scroll unfolds the legendary eastward journey of Ariwara no Narihira, one of Japan's most celebrated Heian-period poets, through a world rendered in refined ink and jewel-like color on silk. Working in late eighteenth-century Japan during the Edo period, Sukoku Ko painted this as one of a complementary pair of scrolls — a format that rewards slow, contemplative viewing, with each composition intended to be read alongside the other. The use of ink and mineral pigments on silk, a technique demanding considerable precision and patience, gives the figures and landscape a luminous, almost translucent quality that paper could never quite replicate. Narihira's eastward journey is immortalized in the Ise Monogatari, a tenth-century poetic narrative in which his travels serve as a meditation on exile, longing, and the fleeting beauty of the natural world. These themes carried particular resonance for Edo-period audiences deeply steeped in classical literature, making the subject a natural choice for refined artistic commissions. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates this intimate scroll tradition into a format suited to Western walls, preserving the compositional elegance and tonal subtlety that make the original so quietly compelling.