Untitled

Tawaraya Sōtatsu|Takeuchi Toshiharu

ca. 1634 · Poem card (shikishi) mounted as a hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on paper · Asian Art

This poem card comes from a set of more than twenty surviving sheets, each of which is illustrated with a scene from the tenth-century Tales of Ise and accompanied by a poem from the relevant chapter inscribed by a calligrapher of the day. In this episode, a courtier traveling on Mount Utsu (literally, “mountain of sadness”) meets an itinerant monk on his way to Kyoto and asks him to give his regards to a lover in the distant capital. Suruga naru Utsu no yamabe no utsutsu ni mo yume ni mo hito ni awanu narikeri Amid the “sad hills” of Mount Utsu in Suruga Province, I cannot meet my lover, not even in my dreams. —Trans. John T. Carpenter

Artist

Tawaraya Sōtatsu|Takeuchi Toshiharu

Date

ca. 1634

Medium

Poem card (shikishi) mounted as a hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on paper

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015