Also known as Minghuang (Jp: Meikō 明皇). Ch: Xuanzong (685-762). The sixth emperor of the Tang dynasty, well-known for his patronage of scholarship, religion, and the arts, including his founding of the Hanlin 翰林 painting Academy in 754. His love for Yang Guifei (Jp: *Yōkihi 楊貴妃, 719-56) and the political patronage of her family, however, culminated in a rebellion in 755 led by An Lushan (Jp: An Rokusan 安禄山, ?-757) that forced Xuanzong and his love to flee from the capital in Changan (Jp: Chōan 長安) to the province of Shu 蜀 (or Sichuan 四川). Gensō was painted by Chinese in several contexts, including official idealized portraits, didactic paintings of Good and Bad Emperors teikan-zu 帝鑑図, and the Journey to Shu (Ch: Minghuang Xingshu, Jp: Meikō Kōshoku 明皇幸蜀). The earliest Japanese depictions of Gensō follow Chinese illustrations of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (Ch: Chang henge, Jp: Chōgonka 長恨歌), a narrative ode by Bai Letian (Jp: *Haku Rakuten 白楽天, 772-846). The theme was painted in the Muromachi period, but the earliest extant examples are *Kano-ha 狩野派 screens from the Momoyama period. In Japan, Gensō is almost always depicted with Yōkihi, and by the Momoyama period the couple were often shown together with Tang courtiers in a subject called *fūryūjin-zu 風流陣図. In the Edo period *Maruyama Shijō-ha 円山四条派 and *ukiyo-e 浮世絵 artists often exploited the erotic implications of the Gensō-Yōkihi theme.