The Essentials of Poetry (Eiga taigai)

Object Details

Artist

Shokado Shojo 松花堂昭乗 (1584-1639)

Signatures

[Signed:] Shokado Shojo

Marks

Seal.

Inscriptions

Inscription: "Written by my brush in accordance with the request from Doshun, the Seal of the Law." (Translation by Y. Shimizu, 1981)

Colophon on separate sheet of paper, attached to the end of the scroll, by Hoso'ai Hansai dated 1781.

This Eiga taigai handscroll first appeared in Naniwa [the old name for Osaka]. According to the owner of the antique shop which had it, the scroll had come from Bizen as merchandise. Because I was the principal figure of the school of Shoka(do)'s calligraphy, the shop owner first asked me to authenticate and evaluate it. As soon as I unrolled a column or two of the scroll, there was no doubt in my mind that it was written by our patriarch of calligraphy (i.e. Shokado). At the end of the scroll was an inscription and a cipher, through which I learned that it had been written for Hayashi Doshun (i.e. Razan: 1583-1657) [Since Shokado] fully attained his intent, the calligraphy should be considered precious and very important. I secretly wanted to acquire it for myself, the price of the scroll being not necessarily too expensive, but, for me, it was not cheap either. What the shop owner wanted was something I could not afford and I felt, after having authenticated it, he just wanted to find out if such an unusual price should be put on the scroll. So I told him that it would be perfectly alright if there was already someone else who wanted to buy it before me, and that basically I did not want to deprive another person of his wishes, and that since the person might be in our group I would drop the matter. But the shop owner again opened the matter about the price. Could it have been that customer after customer who did not buy the scroll did not like it without a price tag and thus the shop owner kept coming back to me? Thus, I finally took the scroll and returned to Bizen.

Now amidst our group was one Mr. Sawada, who had shown great progress in calligraphy. As a connoisseur of calligraphy, he could certainly be counted among the two or three very best. I recounted to him everything about the scroll, and he really expressed great feeling for it. Since he and I were of the same spirit we did not discuss its price. (Mr. Sawada) thereupon went to the shop owner imploring numerous times asking for the scroll. Finally after several months, he want again to Naniwa. The scroll, then priced exactly the same as before, became Mr. Sawada's possession. Since by then I had already read the letter of thanks to Shokado's Eiga taigai included in Razan's prose anthology, and having climbed the hill of Otokoyama and visited the main temple there, where, when coming down, I was shown personal letters as well as the original letter of thanks by Razan, I considered the scroll to be more and more important.

Now, among the tea-aesthetes of Naniwa are also numerous calligraphers. Those of the powerful and influential families and their disciples are taken to elegant pastime and collecting of art objects. If they avail themselves of connoisseurship, authenticating objects, what a niggardly thing [that the shop asked me to authenticate the scroll]! Mr. Sawada is different; he is certainly beyond [such behavior]. As to the shop owner, he certainly was up to no good for having treated with contempt a poor person like myself.

Label

The text of this calligraphic work by Shokado, one of the leading calligraphers in the revival of writing in the Japanese mode during the early 17th century, is the critical essay on the composition of Japanese poetry by Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241). The preface, written in Chinese-style prose (kambun), concludes with the statement that there are no teachers of Japanese poetry but the poems themselves. The preface is followed by 103 poems, which Teika selected from various anthologies as the finest teachers. Shokado's calligraphy in this handscroll, especially in the passages of poetry written in hiragana, is closely linked to models of the Heian period (794-1185). Shokado's classicism distinguishes him from the bolder styles of his contemporaries, Koetsu (see F1903.309 and F1902.195-196) and Nobutada (see F1981.16). For their accomplishments in calligraphy, they are known collectively as the "Three Great Brushes of the Kan'ei Era."

Provenance

About 1639

Commissioned by Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), Edo, Japan [1]

?-?

Reportedly in the collection of the Harai family, method of acquisition unknown [2]

?-About 1781

Unidentified dealer, Bizen, Japan, method of acquisition unknown [3]

About 1781

Reportedly Mr. Sawada, possibly Sawada Tōkō (1732-1796), purchased from an unidentified dealer through Hoso’ai Hansai (1727-1803), Bizen, Japan [4]

?-1981

Takashi YANAGI, Kyoto, Japan, method of acquisition unknown [5]

From 1981

National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, purchased from Takashi YANAGI, Kyoto, Japan [6]

Notes:

[1] See object file for translation of the inscription

which reads, “Written by my brush in accordance with the request from Doshun, the Seal of the Law.” [translation by Y. Shimizu, 1981]. See also note 2.

Hayashi Dōshun (1583-1657), better known as Hayashi Razan, was a prominent Confucian scholar of the early Edo period, as well as a close friend of the artist=calligrapher, Shōkadō Shōjō. Razan was a tutor to successive generations of the Tokugawa Shoguns in Edo beginning in 1607, and he was given the honorary Buddhist title of Ho’in by Shogun Iemitsu (shogunate 1623-1651). Razan’s collected works, compiled in 1659, included Razan’s letter to Shōkadō, dated to the corresponding year 1639, thanking him for paintings and calligraphy, including an Eiga taigai scroll.

[2] See object file for copy of curatorial notes, including a translation of the colophon written by Hosoai Hansai and attached to the object. The following information is from a translation of the colophon by curator Yoshiaki Shimizu. Hosoai Hansai recounted the appearance of this manuscript in an unidentified antique shop in Naniwa (present-day Osaka). Hansai relates that the antique shop owner contacted him to authenticate the scroll and, having done so, Hansai brought the scroll back to Bizen. He was acquainted with a calligrapher in Bizen, whom he refers to as Mr. Sawada, and it was Mr. Sawada who acquired the object from the antiquarian, through Hansai. In the colophon Hansai also notes that, “According to the owner of the antique shop which had it, the scroll had come from Bizen as merchandise.” Hansai explains that “The scroll was once a treasure of the Harai family. Beyond its provenance in Bizen each different pedigree cannot be ascertained. Since their descendants were very different from their ancestors – inheriting the scroll and sometimes swapping it with something else – and it has been some time since it began to be thus handed down, eventually it was sold as merchandise in the antique markets.” After having the scroll remounted, Sawada asked Hansai to make the colophon, which concludes, “On this twenty-fifth day of the (lunar) sixth month of the first year of Tenmei (1781). Respectfully recorded by Hosoai Hansai Masaaki.”

Hosoai Hansai was a student of Confucianism, a calligrapher and a seal carver. He was active in Osaka, where he moved when he was fifteen and eventually took up Chinese studies. Hosoai

was a member of the poetry club “Kontonsha,” founded by Katayama Hokkai (1723-1790), and became a skilled calligraphy scholar who studied the seventeenth century painter and calligrapher Shokado Shojo (1584-1639). Later in life Hosoai took the tonsure and moved to the Kyoto area.

Sawada Tōkō was a Japanese novelist and calligrapher. Likely born in Edo (modern Tokyo) or Kozuke province to the west (modern Gunma province), he would go on to study at the Shōheikō. Sawada became a successful calligrapher and seal carver, and it’s possible he had connections as far away as Naniwa (modern Osaka), including with the calligrapher Hoso’ai Hansai and Katayama Hokkai’s Kontonsha club.

[3] See note 2.

[4] See note 2.

[5] See object file for copy of Freer Gallery of Art vault record no. V21.80, indicating that Takashi YANAGI sent the object to the museum by March 5, 1980.

Takashi YANAGI (1938-2021), of Takashi Yanagi Oriental Fine Arts in Kyoto, Japan was an important dealer of Asian art. His gallery was also known as T. Yanagi Antique Art, and his son Kōichi (1965-2022), opened his eponymous gallery, Kōichi Yanagi Oriental Fine Art, in New York City in 1991. Takashi had two brothers who also carried on the family business of dealing in art, with his brother Shigehiko operating a shop opposite his own in Kyoto. This location was also near the Kyoto home of Yabumoto Sōshirō. Takashi and Shigehiko had a younger brother, Hiroshe, who collaborated several times in the 1990s with Takashi’s son Kōichi, at the International Asian Art Fair at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

[6] See object file for copy of T. YANAGI invoice to the Freer Gallery of Art, dated February 27, 1980, and approved by the Secretary of the Smithsonian May 15, 1980. This object is in the Museum’s Freer Gallery of Art Collection.

Research updated September 11, 2024

Collection

Freer Gallery of Art Collection

Exhibition History

Japanese Art in the Age of Koetsu (June 6, 1998 to February 15, 1999)

From Concept to Context: Approaches to Asian and Islamic Calligraphy (July 28, 1986 to February 6, 1987)

Japanese Calligraphy (December 21, 1984 to November 7, 1985)

Japanese Art—Autumn Voices (October 14, 1981 to December 16, 1981)

Previous custodian or owner

Hayashi Razan 林羅山 (1583-1657)

Takashi Yanagi

Credit Line

Purchase — funds provided by the bequest of Edith Ehrman

ca. 1639

Period

Edo period

Accession Number

F1981.1

Restrictions & Rights

Usage conditions apply

Type

Calligraphy

Medium

Ink on gold and silver-flecked paper with ivory jiku

Dimensions

H x W (overall): 27.2 x 516.6 cm (10 11/16 x 203 3/8 in)

Origin

Japan

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Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Collection

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Topic

ivory

Edo period (1615 - 1868)

poetry

standard script

cursive script

semi-cursive script

Japan

Japanese Art

Record ID

fsg_F1981.1

Metadata Usage (text)

Not determined

GUID (Link to Original Record)

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ye3f9ad4865-3173-4d52-99f4-ab9eb52dd1e4