The painting is a polychrome-and-gold screen that depicts a cypress tree against the backdrop of gold-leafed clouds, and surrounded by the dark blue waters of a pond.

The painting stretches across two four-panel folding screens from circa 1590; it is made of paper covered with gold leaf, depicting a cypress tree, a symbol of longevity in Japan.

[3][4] Commonly attributed to Kanō Eitoku (1543–1590), there is another theory based on a reference to a commission in The Diary of Prince Toshihito (智仁観王日記) that the painting was instead made by Eitoku's younger brother Kanō Sōshū (狩野宗秀).

[2] The eight panels originally took the form of four painted shōji, later remounted, which helps account for some of the discontinuities in the image.

[2][5] After the Meiji Restoration the paintings passed from the Katsura-no-miya to the Imperial Household and thence to the nation.