Self Guided Tours to explore Beyond Golden Clouds

These tours are available in the museum on laminated cards to aid you in looking more closely at the screens in the exhibition. You may also download them as PDF files onto your own computer for future study and reflection.

References for the literary quotes used on the guide about subjects:

1)
Better than yesterday
Is their excellence today;
How can we stop, then,
Without seeing the colors
Of tomorrow’s maple leaves?

—By Prince Egyo, approx. 900s
Shuishu III: 199 in Beyond Golden Clouds: Japanese Screens from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum, p. 54.

2)
With unfeeling heart,
The Weaver Maid [the star Vega] has
promised
To meet once a year.
Can meeting but once a year
Be called meeting at all?

—By Fujiwara no Okikaze, approx. 890–920
In Beyond Golden Clouds: Japanese Screens from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum, p. 164.

3)
Surrounding the pavilion were high hills with lofty peaks, luxuriant
woods and tall bamboos. There was, moreover, a swirling, splashing stream,
wonderfully clear, which curved round it like a ribbon, so that we seated
ourselves along it in a drinking game, in which cups of wine were set afloat
and drifted to those who sat downstream.

—Translated by H.C. Chang.
http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.
php?searchterm=017_orchidpavillion.inc&issue=017

4)
Whereas the wild deer is always ready to flee.
If you want to conquer the heart of the monkey,
You must listen to the lion’s roar.

—Attributed to Hanshan, approx. 800s
In Beyond Golden Clouds: Japanese Screens from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum, p. 99.

5)
Chill, this thin straw mat;
Awaiting through the night as the Autumn
Wind blows stronger,
Moonlight falling all around,
My maid at Uji Bridge.

—By Fujiwara Sadaie (Teika), 1162–1241
Shinkokinshu IV: 420
http://www.temcauley.staff.shef.ac.uk/waka1236.shtml

6)
A little page girl who had been cheering for the victor
went down into the garden and gathered an armful of fallen branches.
“The winds have sent them falling to the ground,
But I shall pick them up, for they are ours.”

—Murasaki Shikibu, Tale of Genji, ch. 44, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Knopf, 1976), p. 761.

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Self Guided Tours to explore Beyond Golden Clouds