Lot Essay
This page of two poems each with a brief introductory paragraph comes from the Ise-shu, a volume of verses by the poetess Ise (late 9th-early 10th century) forming part of a larger collection, the Nishihonganji-hon Sanjurokunin-shui, which brought together works by the Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry.
The first poem reads:
Yomosugara
mono omou toki no
tsurazue wa
kaina tayusa mo
shirazu zo arikeru
Lying chin on hand
I was sunk in thoughts of love
throughout the long night
and hardly noticed that my
arm had grown numb and weary
The second poem reads:
Ono no e no
kutsu wa kari ni wa
aranedomo
kaerimita ni mo
miru hito no naki
Although I never let
'my axe handle rot away'
when I turned
round to look there was no one
there for me to see
(The allusion is to a Chinese ruler who spent so long watching a magic game of go that the handle of his axe rotted away.)
The set was handed down in the Japanese Imperial collection until 1549, when it was presented by the Emperor Go-Nara (reigned 1526-57) to a monk of the Honganji temple at Ishiyama on the site of present-day Osaka Castle. The books then disappeared for over three centuries until they were rediscovered at the Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto (from which they derive their name) in 1896 and later, in 1929, broken up and dispersed to raise money for a women's college; it was at this point that the pages, along with those from another set, volume two of the Tsurayuki-shu, were given the collective name Ishiyama-gire [Ishiyama fragments] by the celebrated industrialist, tea practitioner and art collector Masuda Takashi (Don'o, 1848-1937). For an example of an Ishiyama-gire owned by Masuda, see Christine M. E. Guth, Art, Tea, and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1993), figure 6-11, attributed to Fujiwara Sadanobu. Although the identity of the calligrapher has not been conclusively established, it is widely accepted that the style is similar to that of two other leaves from the Nishihonganji-hon Sanjurokunin-shu as well as a leaf from another collection, the Narihira-shu, traditionally but mistakenly ascribed to Fujiwara no Kinto (966-1041). Other pages from the Ise-shu book are in three leading American collections: the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum and the Mary Griggs Burke collection (see Miyeko Murase, Bridge of Dreams: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), cat. no. 20).
The first poem reads:
Yomosugara
mono omou toki no
tsurazue wa
kaina tayusa mo
shirazu zo arikeru
Lying chin on hand
I was sunk in thoughts of love
throughout the long night
and hardly noticed that my
arm had grown numb and weary
The second poem reads:
Ono no e no
kutsu wa kari ni wa
aranedomo
kaerimita ni mo
miru hito no naki
Although I never let
'my axe handle rot away'
when I turned
round to look there was no one
there for me to see
(The allusion is to a Chinese ruler who spent so long watching a magic game of go that the handle of his axe rotted away.)
The set was handed down in the Japanese Imperial collection until 1549, when it was presented by the Emperor Go-Nara (reigned 1526-57) to a monk of the Honganji temple at Ishiyama on the site of present-day Osaka Castle. The books then disappeared for over three centuries until they were rediscovered at the Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto (from which they derive their name) in 1896 and later, in 1929, broken up and dispersed to raise money for a women's college; it was at this point that the pages, along with those from another set, volume two of the Tsurayuki-shu, were given the collective name Ishiyama-gire [Ishiyama fragments] by the celebrated industrialist, tea practitioner and art collector Masuda Takashi (Don'o, 1848-1937). For an example of an Ishiyama-gire owned by Masuda, see Christine M. E. Guth, Art, Tea, and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1993), figure 6-11, attributed to Fujiwara Sadanobu. Although the identity of the calligrapher has not been conclusively established, it is widely accepted that the style is similar to that of two other leaves from the Nishihonganji-hon Sanjurokunin-shu as well as a leaf from another collection, the Narihira-shu, traditionally but mistakenly ascribed to Fujiwara no Kinto (966-1041). Other pages from the Ise-shu book are in three leading American collections: the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum and the Mary Griggs Burke collection (see Miyeko Murase, Bridge of Dreams: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), cat. no. 20).