Page 132 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

6ç Precepts of the Seven Buddhas sive (gydsho) modes, executed in bold,
Ikkyú Sójun (1394-1481) rough, and swift brushwork that conveys
hanging scroll; ink on paper something of the tempestuous nature of
3 8 x 125 8
x
2 2
125.3 3 - (49 / / ) the calligrapher. The brush was apparently
Muromachi period, i5th century made of a piece of bamboo, finely split at
one end. The brush movement was so
Eisei Bunko, Tokyo
quick that Ikkyú inadvertently omitted the
A single line of bold calligraphy fills the character "good" from the second verse.
narrow paper: This character was added later in small,
precise calligraphy, to the right of Ikkyú's
Do not commit evil deeds; text. On the lower left is stamped a square
Strive to do good deeds. relief seal, Ikkyu. YS
These are the first two of four verses
known as Shichibutsu tsùkai no ge, or
Verses of Precepts of the Seven Buddhas,
from the early Buddhist sutra Zdichi-agon-
kyd (Ekottara-agama-sutra in Sanskrit;
translated into Chinese during the Eastern
Jin Dynasty, AD 317-420), which summa-
rizes the essential teachings of the Bud-
dhas. The remaining verses, not
transcribed here by Ikkyu, read:
Purify your thoughts—
This is what the Buddhas teach.
The calligraphy is by the famous Zen
monk Ikkyu Sojun (cat. 11). A work like
this, written in a single column, is known
as ichigydsho, or a single line of calligraphy
that often transcribes revered names or
epithets or extracts from sacred texts—a
kind of written icon. This form is distinctly
Japanese, being unknown in China. A cal-
ligraphy with four large characters, Sha Ka
Nyo Rai (the Buddha Sakyamuni), written
by Tettô Gikô (1295-1369), the second ab-
bot of Daitokuji, is an early Japanese ex-
ample of ichigydsho. It is possible that
Ikkyu, in his deep veneration of this mas-
ter, followed the same format. Another
well-known work in this format by Ikkyu is
an epithet, The First Patriarch, Great Mas-
ter Bodhidharma, in a private collection in
this country.
Ikkyu was born on New Year's Day,
1394, the son of the emperor Go-Komatsu
(r. 1392-1411); because he was born outside
the palace he was never acknowledged as
an imperial son. Ikkyu was a passionate
and outspoken iconoclast—a harsh critic
of received pieties, ceremonious practices,
and the contemporary Zen establishment,
which thrived through the patronage of
the Ashikaga government and powerful
daimyo. His fulminations against most of
the Zen hierarchy were vitriolic, and he
refused all clerical appointments, choosing
instead to move from one small hermitage
to the next, training only a handful of dis-
ciples. Ikkyú finally became abbot of
Daitokuji, in 1474, at the age of eighty-
four, but only in response to an imperial
summons to rebuild the devastated Daito-
kuji, and he retained the post for less than
a year.
The calligraphy here is somewhere
between the regular (kaisho) and semicur-

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