The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens: Iconography of the Sea and Pine Trees

Folding screens, as their Sinitic name, byōbu 屛風, implies, serve to block out (byō) undesired drafts (bu). Furthermore, these screens serve as practical portable partitions for separating larger spaces into smaller compartments. Historical documents strongly suggest that, aside from these more obviously pragmatic functions, folding screens were also employed for ceremonial purposes in various annual events and other ritual spaces. Unlike more permanent partitions, such as sliding doors decorated with painted images (fusuma 襖), folding screens could be stored away, taken out, and moved about as necessity required. Consequently, it is often difficult to say with much precision exactly where a given folding screen might once have been used. Moreover, while documents from the Heian period include numerous references to folding screens, evidence that such furnishings were indeed abundant, only one folding screen from the period has survived to the present, namely, the byōbu depicting a landscape scene (Senzui byōbu 山水屛風) preserved at Tōji Temple 東寺. With such a dearth of extant examples, it is no easy task to reconstruct the world of artistic imagery once seen on folding screens throughout the Heian period. Comprehensive research into those spaces in which folding screens were employed has already been carried out. Investigations of so-called “paintingswithin-paintings” (gachūga 画中画), depictions of painted folding screens embedded within illustrations found in illustrated scrolls (emaki 絵巻), have revealed a great deal about such spaces.1 For example, in the Hōnen Shōnin eden 法然上人絵 The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens: Iconography of the Sea and Pine Trees