CAPITALSCAPES: Folding Screens and Political Imagination in Late Medieval Kyoto, by Matthew Philip McKelway. Honolulu, University of Hawai'i Press, 2006, 282 pp., 24 color plates, numerous b/w illustrations, $56.00 (cloth).

One of the major formats in the history of Japanese painting are the byobu-e, screens on which scenes are often pictured. These screens are free-standing, portable, usually come in pairs, can serve as divider or background and have been popular since as early as the Nara period (710-794).

Among the many different kinds of picture such screens hold is the interesting category of city pictures. There are many examples of Edo's being pictured on screens and there are at least 100 examples of the rakuchu rakugai zu, folding-screen paintings depicting the city of Kyoto. It is these that are examined, described, and pictured in this scholarly and interesting account of their practical uses, aesthetic claims and political purposes.

Almost without exception, Kyoto screens are conceived as pairs and are folded, usually, into six panels each. Every screen presents the city and its surrounding in different aerial perspectives. The urban spaces are in the lower half of each screen, and the outskirts serve as background for the upper half. Kyoto's grid plan is depicted by setting east-west streets on parallel diagonals and north-south streets on parallel horizontals. All the screens employ gold, usually in form of cloud patterns, and most are enlivened by the depiction of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of figures of the inhabitants.