A pictorial subject based on "Sawarabi" ("Early Ferns"), Chapter 48 of Genji monogatari 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji). In this chapter, Prince Niō *Niō no Miya 匂宮 moves his new love, Naka no kimi 中君, from Uji 宇治 to his Nijō 二条 mansion in the capital. Kaoru 薫, having lost Ōigimi 大君 (see *Agemaki 総角), finds himself falling in love with her younger sister Naka no kimi, whose affair with Niō he himself arranged. The most frequently chosen episode for illustration is that which gives the chapter its title: towards the end of the First Month, the abbot of Uji, Yama no Ajari 山の阿闍利, sends a basket of fern shoots to Naka no kimi, accompanied by a poem. The scene of Naka no kimi and her servant woman preparing for the move to the Nijō mansion survives in a section of the earliest illustrated version, the 12th-century masterpiece in the Tokugawa 徳川 Art Museum, Aichi Prefecture.
