An illuminated manuscript, it narrates in eight calligraphed and painted scrolls the life of Sugawara no Michizane and the construction of the Kitano Tenmangū shrine in his honour after his death.

[1][2] Originating in Japan in the sixth or seventh century through trade with the Chinese Empire, emakimono art spread widely among the aristocracy in the Heian period.

The themes of the stories were very varied: illustrations of novels, historical chronicles, religious texts, biographies of famous people, humorous or fantastic anecdotes, etc.

[8] The first part relates the life of Michizane, a scholar and statesman who was influential in the Heian-kyō court despite his humble origins, and who became a popular literary figure.

In the second part of the Jōkyū version, the vengeful ghost of Michizane returns to earth after his death to torment the actors of the conspiracy, in the form of a god of thunder.

[9] The court finally decided to build the Kitano Tenmangū shrine in Kyōto in 947 in honour of Michizane in order to calm his mind, a passage recounted in the third part of the work; he is worshipped there under the name of Tenjin, a protective god of arts and letters.

[1] The composition also plays on the differences of scale, as in the often depicted scene of the prayer of Michizane atop a mountain:[12] he is shown is overly large to represent his strength of character, despite a humble posture that makes him an "allegorical figure of man".

[14] Although Buddhism greatly inspired Japanese art at the time, the style of the Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki is also linked to Shinto, resulting in greater freedom and humanity.

[15] Besides its historical and religious content, the Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki offers insight into everyday life, not of the time of Michizane, but of that of the artist 300 years later.

[18] More generally, the architecture of the characters' habitats, their internal layout, the clothes, the festivities, the wooden bridges, the graves, the pets, the children who appear very frequently, and a multitude of other details are revealed by a study of the work by the Kanagawa University.