Important Cultural PropertySegment of 29th volume of anthology of Wang Bo

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  • 1 scroll
  • Ink on paper
  • L26.0 Total L 51.1
  • Tang period/7-8th century
  • Tokyo National Museum
  • TB-1571

This is a collection of Wang Bo (Ou Botsu, 649 - 677), a poet in the early Tang Dynasty in China who died at the age of 29. His nickname was "Zi-an" and he was born in the town of Jiangzhou Longmen (the current Hejin area) in Shangxi Province. As the grandson of the reputed scholar Wang Tong (Ou Tô) in the Sui Dynasty, he became an official and served under the crown prince Pei Wang (or Li Xian) in the years 664 – 666 (the Linde or Rintoku era of the Tang Dynasty). He was later demoted due to a certain incident and drowned while on a journey. Having mastered poetry at a very early age, he was highly regarded as one of the "Four Literary Eminences in Early Tang" together with Yang Jiong (Yôkei), Lu Zhaolin (Roshôrin) and Luo Binwang (Rakuhin-ou).
The works of Wang Bo include 30 volumes of the "Wang Bo Collection," as mentioned in "The Ancient Book of Tang." The original text was lost, but recollected and republished as "The Annotated Collection of Wang Bo (Wangzian Jizhu)" by Jiang Qianyi in the Qing Dynasty. However with the Wang Bo Collection kept in our country, the missing original edition was supplemented.
Without the use of the new characters, Zetian characters (sokuten-moji; Chinese characters of Empress Wu), as introduced by the Empress Wu Zeitian (Busokuten), it is often considered that the work was written around the years 685 – 689 (the Chuigong or Suikyô and Yongchang or Eishô periods), about 10 years after Wang Bo's death. Volume 28 (private collection) and volumes 29, 30 (owned by the Tokyo National Museum), which are also deemed as national treasures, are also part of this collection.

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