Introduction : reading the Ise stories across history, gender, and class -- The romance of the picture : screen-pictures, screen-poems, and the Ise monogatari -- Female readers andn early Heian romances : the Hakubyō Ise stories illustrated scroll fragments -- Allusion and authority : The love song of Lord Takafusa -- The Kubo version : the Ise stories as cultural capital -- The love song of Lord Takafusa illustrated scroll -- Tantric commentaries and popular humor : the Variant Ise stories illustrated scrolls -- The establishment of an iconography : the Saga edition Ise stories -- Ise iconography as visual "secret transmission" (Hiden) : the creation of the Ise iconography of the Sōtatsu Atelier -- Epilogue : The Ise stories and their imagery in the later Edo and modern periods.