Scene from "Ise monogatari" (Tales of Ise) 

The scene comes from “Kutakake,” the 14th section of Tales of Ise. A man who is thought to be modeled on Ariwara no Narihira spends the night with a woman he has met in Mutsu Province, but departs before dawn leaving behind a sarcastic poem deriding the woman as provincial. Not noticing the poem’s sarcasm, the woman laments that “my lover left too early believing it was already morning because the pesky kutakake (an archaic name for chicken) crowed.” When he was young, Ushida Keison studied painting in the traditional way, copying so-called funpon (collections of sketches for learning classical motifs and techniques). That training is discernible in this work, and yet the customary depiction of plants in the house’s garden is omitted and the figures are emphasized with a clean composition. The use of a set of two hanging scrolls expresses not only the distance between the inside and outside of the house, but the distance between the hearts of the man and woman who did not communicate with each other.
(UCHIYAMA Junko)