National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties
of National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan

A single poem, opening with the words “Ware mite mo,” graces a canvas made from two pieces of paper joined together, dyed dark indigo and light blue-green respectively. Taken from the seventeenth volume of the Kokin wakashū poetry anthology, it roughly translates to, “This beautiful pine on the shore of Suminoe, ancient even to me—how many ages must it have experienced?” It describes one of the pine trees on the shores of Sumiyoshi (also known as Suminoe) in Settsu Province (part of present-day Osaka and Hyōgo), which often appear as a symbol of eternity in Japanese waka poems. The first half of the poem, “Ware mite mo / hisashiku narinu / Suminoe no” われみても　ひさしくなりぬ　すみのゑの, is written on the first page (right), while the second half “kishi no himematsu / ikuyo e nuramu”きしのひめ松　いくよへぬらむ, is on the second page (left). Stylistically, this work of calligraphy features characters written in a scattered manner (chirashi-gaki, which literally means “scattered writing”), and positioned in a way that juxtaposes the poem with the empty spaces around them.

The Tsugishikishi counts itself as one of the most famous ancient calligraphy anthologies from the Heian period, and is still well loved today. It is often grouped with the Sunshōan-shikishi and the Masushikishi, with these three works collectively known as the Sanshikishi (Three [Great] Shikishi). By itself, the Tsugishikishi was a set of over thirty poems that had originally existed as a whole in the form of a poetry anthology with an unknown title, its colorful papers bound together in the decchō (sometimes spelled detchō) style. Over the years, the book has been taken apart to be mounted on scrolls as decorations in a reception room alcove, or moved into albums that assemble exemplary works of calligraphy for appreciation and appraisal. “Ware mite mo” is one such fragment, comprising three pages from this book. We only see writing on one side of the paper in this work, implying that the Tsugishikishi was bound in the early days of decchō binding, as later decchō-bound books have writing on both sides of the paper. In addition, the poems in this book were written over two pages, earning it the nickname hanshu-gire (lit., “poems cut in half”) during the Edo period. Even though the book has since been taken apart, its luxurious use of paper fully accentuates artistic effects brought about by the empty spaces created by the scattered writing.

Another feature of the calligraphy found in the Tsugishikishi are the unbroken, freely meandering strokes used to write successive characters in one long breath. When the work was presented to Emperor Gomizunoo in the early Edo period, he had identified its writing as that of Ki no Tsurayuki (?–945). On the other hand, many experts believe it to be the work of Ono no Tōfū (894–966). Even though we have yet to pin down its exact creator, we can tell from the characteristics of the script that it dates from the transitional period in which Japanese kana characters, originally based off Chinese characters, were evolving into modern hiragana script. We can see an inclination toward the traditional style in the way the writer chose to write the kana characters in cursive, as demonstrated by how the characters like te in “Ware mite mo,” which developed from the character 帝, and e in “Suminoe,” developed from 盈, resemble the cursive versions of their original Chinese characters. On the other hand, characters in “hisashi,” as well as the characters “nu” and “ki,” have almost completely morphed into their modern forms; these characters would become part of a script known as onnade, which was standardized around the mid-eleventh century. Based on these characteristics, we can deduce that the Tsugishikishi was likely created sometime between the second half of the tenth century to the early eleventh century.