filter_framesMushi no Utaawase Emaki 虫歌合絵巻

The Mushi no Utaawase Emaki is a 1722 cm (56 ft) long scroll consisting of 15 panels of text and color paintings. "Mushi" means insects in Japanese, and "Utaawase" is literally "poem match," a competition in which pairs of poems composed by two teams on assigned themes are judged on the basis of their literary merit. "Emaki" is an illustrated text or narrative picture scroll. The Mushi no Utaawase Emaki depicts a tale written by a monk in which the participants in the poetry competition are fifteen pairs of insects, and a frog is the judge. The poems are Japanese waka, which consist of 31 syllables in lines of 5–7-5-7-7.

The creator of the scroll is unknown, but the work probably dates to the Edo period (1600-1868), and the accompanying text is thought to have been composed in the first half of the 17th century. The author of the text is also unknown, but scholars have suggested that it is either 細川幽斎, Hosokawa Yūsai (1534-1610), or 木下勝俊, Kinoshita Katsutoshi (1570-1650), who is also known as 木下長嘯子, Kinoshita Chōshōshi.

Note to viewers: Each text section begins with a poem competition session number and includes 2 poems, one left and one right, each labeled as "sung" by a different insect, and then includes a "critique" of the poems as given by a frog who is judging the poetry competition. A watercolor painting loosely corresponds to each text section, showing the insects in the scenery. This kind of scroll is typically viewed one section at a time on a study desk.

This collection was curated by Keiko Yokota-Carter, Japanese Studies Librarian. Image description was provided by Dorothy Ma, Michigan Library Scholar (2019), as part of the project "Increasing Accessibility to Digital Image Collections in Japanese Studies" with Stephanie Rosen, Accessibility Specialist, and Ben Howell, User Experience & Accessibility Specialist.

We thank Dr. Natsu Oyobe, Curator of Asian Art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art for her comments on the scroll images.

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