Susuki grasses are represented through countless vertical lines and arc shapes that are arranged horizontally across the screen. The white blossoms of chrysanthemums and bush clovers appear scattered within in the grass. The prominent circle in the center is the moon, now blackened because of oxidation but originally done in shining bright silver. There are about ten known folding screens, usually pairs, with similar compositions, constituting a type of work generically known as “Musashino” screens.

Musashino is today a Western part of the larger Tokyo metropolitan area, but until settlement begun in the mid-Edo period it used to be a vast grass plain. That seemingly boundless expanse of the Musashino fields fascinated the poets of the capital Kyoto, where the moon would always rise and set over the mountains ranges that surround the city. For instance, Kujo Yoshitsune, a courtier of the late Heian period, composed a verse that roughly translates “My path is just like another moon that rises into the sky from the vast Musashino plains.”

The earliest known examples of scenes depicting Musashino are from the Ogi no soshi, a genre of books from the late Muromachi to early Edo periods where the pictures included are in the shape of fans. Most of these scenes are accompanied by a verse by an anonymous poet that reads “In Musashino, the moon shines on no mountains: it rises and sets within the grasses.” Similar scenes appear not only in the Ogi no soshi but were also used for decoration on actual fans. The genre of Musashino folding screens possibly traces its origins to such small-scale works.

The earliest extant Musashino folding screen is in the collection of the Ogino Museum in Kurashiki. It is noteworthy that this version uses double outlines for the transition from the golden background clouds to the painted grasses, a technique typical of the Muromachi period. The screen also includes a larger number of autumn grasses and more complex shapes for the background clouds than later Musashino screens. Yet the reliance on verticals and arc shapes for the susuki grasses is reminiscent of later examples such as the present one. This implies that artists of later periods may have singled out the subject matter of susuki grasses and developed it further at the expense of other motifs.

The majority of Musashino folding screens use the same design of susuki grasses spread out evenly across the screens. An important variation concerns the background, which is either left empty or includes a rendering of Mount Fuji. Later versions mostly belong to the group with Mount Fuji in the background. Among the earliest of the former is a folding screen in the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum. The right screen of this pair resembles the present work regarding the wave-like pattern of the undergrow and the somewhat ambiguous transition from golden background to the foreground motifs. The artist of Musashino alternates concave and convex shapes in that transition in a similar manner like in the Ishikawa version, which is curious as in both cases it obscures the idea that these shapes represent golden clouds. The closeness of these details suggests that the present screen also once was part of a pair with a similar composition like the Ishikawa folding screen.

Close comparison to the Ishikawa screen also reveals that in the present work the outline of the golden clouds is obscured with small cuts of gold leaf. Again, this technique is prominent in folding screens of the Muromachi period; hence Musashino may predate the Ishikawa screen. This would make it the second-earliest extant example of a Musashino screen painting, after the one in the Ogino Museum.