EDO PERIOD (18TH CENTURY), SIGNED MUCHUAN HARITSU AND SEALED KAN (OGAWA HARITSU [RITSUO]; 1663-1747)

This stationery box was originally paired with a writing box. The imagery of black pines on the lid of the stationery box and the hut by the bay on the underside of its lid illustrate two of the three famous "autumn evening" poems (sanseki no uta) from the New Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems (Shinkokinshu), the eighth of the anthologies of Japanese poetry compiled by imperial order. Completed in 1205, the collection was assembled by a committee headed by Fujiwara Teika (1162-1241), the leading light in the world of letters in his day. The lid of the now-lost writing box would have featured the content of the second of the three poems, by Saigyo. The poems have been translated by Donald Keene:

Sabishisa wa
sono iro to shi mo
nakarikeri
maki tatsu yama no
aki no yugure

Loneliness does not
originate in any one
particular thing:
Evening in autumn over
the black pines of the mountain
The Priest Jakuren

Kokoro naki
mi ni mo aware wa
shirarekeri
shigi tatsu sawa mo
aki no yugure

Even to someone
free of passions this sadness
would be apparent:
Evening in autumn over
a marsh where a snipe rises
Saigyo

Miwataseba
hana mo momiji mo
nakarikeri
ura no tomaya no
aki no yugure

In this wide landscape
I see no cherry blossoms
and no crimson leaves-
Evening in autumn over
a straw-thatched hut by the bay
Fujiwara no Teika

(From Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature [New York: Grove Press, 1955], 195-96)