This painting comes from the Johnson’s complete set of illustrations of Murasaki Shikibu’s eleventh-century masterwork of literature, the romantic novel Tale of Genji. Each scene offers a bird’s-eye view of the world inhabited by her fictitious Prince Genji on his amorous adventures, and is accompanied by an embellished paper sheet on which a short excerpt from the chapter is presented. The paintings follow the traditional Tosa school style in which figures are depicted in a simple and motionless manner in bright colors and gold leaf, based on pictorial codes from the classic Heian and Kamakura periods (11th–14th centuries).

Here, Genji is intrigued by a beautiful woman who recites a poetic line as she gazes at her open fan. Their affair is brief but later has serious consequences for Genji.