A Poem from the Shin Kokinshu with Design of Shinobugusa (Moss Fern)

Kôetsu · 1605-10

Medium

Fragment of a handscroll mounted as a hanging scroll; ink, gold, silver-colored pigment, and mica on paper

Original size

33.6 × 44.5 cm (13 1/4 × 17 1/2 in.); With mounting: 121.6 × 57.5 cm (47 7/8 × 22 5/8 in.); Including lower roller: H.: 62.9 cm (24 3/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

This fragment of a handscroll, now mounted as a hanging scroll, distills a thousand years of Japanese poetic tradition into a single sheet of shimmering paper. Hon'ami Kōetsu was one of the great renaissance figures of early Edo Japan — master calligrapher, lacquer designer, tea practitioner, and ceramicist. The scrolls he produced around 1605–10 represent a celebrated collaboration with the painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu, who decorated the paper with silver and gold pigment and mica before Kōetsu laid down his brushwork. The mica ground catches and scatters light in a way that makes the surface feel alive, while the undulating script moves across the sheet with the unhurried confidence of someone who considered writing itself a form of poetry. The text draws from the Shin Kokinshū, a thirteenth-century imperial anthology regarded as one of the pinnacles of Japanese literary culture, and the sinobugusa motif — moss fern — carried strong associations with longing and memory in the waka tradition. Our hand-painted oil reproduction renders the layered luminosity of the original with careful attention to its tonal depth and the quiet tension between the decorated ground and the flowing calligraphic line.