Battle at Uji Bridge, from The Tale of the Heike

In the shadow of temple buildings in the upper right, armed warriors on foot and on horseback fight each other across a bridge. Two warrior priests fight nimbly on the beams, one jumping over the head of his comrade to get to the enemy. The armor and weapons, primarily bows and arrows and long halberds instead of swords, date the story to a time well before the screens were painted. The battle depicted occurred in 1180 and was described in The Tale of the Heike, a literary epic about the wars between two samurai clans at the end of the Heian period (794–1185).

On the right side of this screen are members of the Minamoto (Genji) clan, who have come out of hiding at a Buddhist temple to fight the warriors of the Taira (Heike) clan, on the left. The Minamoto side is defeated in this particular battle, but they triumph in the end and become Japan’s first family of shoguns.