This
is the sort of Chinese landscape which the Japanese apparently knew best,
a view of wild-eyed musicians riding an elephant through an exotic mountain
landscape, which appears on the plectrum of a lute in the Shôsôin
storehouse. It was surely this kind of scene that Lady Murasaki had in
mind when she wrote, rather condescendingly, "We are happy to put up with
this land of dreams, with the awesome creatures that inhabit the wild deeps
and the fearsome beasts that roam the kingdom of China—but it would be
a mistake to take them seriously."