There are four scenes from the tenth-century travel diary Tales of Ise illustrated on this box. On the lid Narihira sits on his veranda and contemplates plum blossoms in the garden by moonlight, brooding over the woman who used to live there. He composes this well-known poem:

Is not the moon the same?
The spring
The spring of old?
Only this body of mine
Is the same body...¹

The next scene, wrapping around two sides of the box, shows him travelling by horse at the foot of Mount Fuji. On the other two sides of the box is the abduction scene on Musashi Plain. The lovers are shown in a clump of tall autumn grasses, while armed pursuers prepare to set fire to the field. The girl recites the poem:

Do not set fire today
To Musashi Plain
For my beloved husband
Is hidden there,
And so am I.

The final scene is on the tray inside the box and shows a boy and a girl playing together beside a well. When they grow up they wish to marry and the boy sends her this poem:

My height that we measured
At the well curb
Has, it seems,
Passed the old mark
Since I last saw you.


1. This and the following two quotations are from Tales of Ise, translated by Helen Craig McCullough (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1968), pp. 71, 78 and 88 respectively.