In this paper, I will investigate the copying and development of pictorial composition in painting of the late Muromachi period. I will take as my focus paintings on folding fans, which supply a fertile field of inquiry in terms of sheer numbers of actual works and numbers of compositions, in order to investigate the relationship between folding fan paintings and the Southern Song dynasty "originals" from which they often borrowed compositions. The present paper will further focus on fan paintings produced by Kano-school painters, particular an example of "fans on waves" screens, in which can be found sets of fans related by subject and authorship.
  For example, the pair of screens, Fans of the Twenty-four Paragons on Waves, is an example of a work in which several different kinds of subject matter, including figures, landscapes, birds, and flowers, all appear together on the panels of the same screens. I will pose questions regarding the original format in which these works appeared, the sources for their compositions, and what meaning these works could have had for their possessors. Even if we know that some fan paintings borrow compositions from Southern Song dynasty paintings, we must ask why painters focused on those particular "originals". Further, I will speculate on the question of what function the format of fan paintings played in the development and production of painters in the Kano workshop.
  A final set of questions the paper will pose regards the reception and afterlife of these works on fan paintings, particularly those in Twenty-four Paragons screens and related works of the "fans on waves" medium. How were certain compositions circulated in visual cultural contexts in the late sixteenth century? Why were certain compositions favored above others? What do these works inform us about the aesthetic status of folding fan paintings in late medieval Japan? The paper thus proposes to comprehend fan paintings beyond the compositional workings of their surfaces and consider them as objects that moved through different contexts, steadily gaining distance from the "originals" upon which they were based.