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century by the courtier-poet Fujiwara no Kintō (966 – 1041), reminding us that
poets in palace circles would have been expected to be au fait composing in either
language and able to execute elegant calligraphy in both Japanese and Chinese

court styles.
Although not considered one of the traditional Three Brushes of Kan’ei — a
sobriquet referring to the three masters Kōetsu, Nobutada, and Shōjō — the high-

ranking courtier Karasumaru Mitsuhiro should be granted honorary status as the
“fourth brush” of the early Edo period. Active in the cultural circles of Emperor
Go-Mizunoo, Mitsuhiro was an imperial loyalist in an age when the Tokugawa
shoguns controlled the palace; he was also part of the same tea circles as many of
the figures mentioned above. The style of Mitsuhiro’s calligraphy, like Kōetsu’s,

harks back to classical court models, but at the same time it partakes of an eccen-
tricity redolent of the writings of medieval Zen monks. Mitsuhiro was among the
most radical stylists of his time, in fact, prompting some of his contemporaries

to complain that even they could not decipher his inscriptions.
In addition to a poem in Mitsuhiro’s own hand found on a painting of a
grebe by Sōtatsu (see cat. 49), a fine exemplar of the courtier-poet’s work is a
long handscroll on the theme of the Ten Ox-Herding Songs, a Zen parable in
which a herdboy’s pursuit of an elusive ox becomes a metaphor for the quest for

satori, or enlightenment (cat. 16). The stenciled patterns of stylized chrysan-
themums and paulownia leaves on the scroll are dual symbols of the Japanese
monarchy, and permission for their use was often granted to loyal retainers of

the throne, as the Tokugawa shoguns pretended to be. Even the untutored eye
can detect in Mitsuhiro’s eccentric brushwork a wide array of styles, from dryly
brushed strokes to characters rendered with a brush so moist that ink seeps into
the surrounding paper, considered a desirable effect if not overdone. Other
passages reveal strands of kana connected by ligatures so fine that it is hard to

imagine they were inscribed by the same hand.

poems

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