Heiji Monogatari Emaki

Both the author and the sponsor of the work remain unknown, and its production probably spanned several decades. Nowadays, only three original scrolls and a few fragments of a fourth remain; they are held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Seikadō Bunko Art Museum, Tokyo, and the Tokyo National Museum. The civil wars for the domination of Japan at the end of the Heian period, which ended with the victory of the Minamoto clan in the Genpei War, had a strong effect on the course of history in Japan. They have also been illustrated in many artworks, including the Heiji Monogatari Emaki, which has inspired many artists up until modern times.

The paintings in the work, in the Yamato-e style, are distinguished by both the dynamism of lines and movement and the vivid colours, as well as a realistic impetus characteristic of the arts of the Kamakura period. Cruelty, massacres and barbarities are also reproduced without any attenuation. The result is a "new style particularly suited to the vitality and confidence of the Kamakura period". In several scrolls, long painted sequences introduced by short calligraphy passages are carefully composed in such a way as to create the tragic and the epic, such as the passage of the fire at Sanjō Palace, deeply studied by art historians.