The
greater threat to the placid life of the aristocrats was not the people,
however, but the rising military elite, the samurai class. This scroll
scene depicts a historical even that took place in Kyoto just about the
time that the Genji scroll was painted. Above, soldiers in armor pound
on the gate of an aristocrat’s residence, while several court ladies cringe
in fear at the bottom. Their fate is depicted a bit later in the scroll,
as we see next.