Page 91 - japanese and korean art Utterberg Collection Christie's March 22 2022

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ATTRIBUTED TO SESONJI YUKIYOSHI (1179-1255?)
Complete set of the Wakan roeishu (Collection of Japanese
and Chinese Poems to Sing)
Pair of handscrolls; ink on paper
11¬ x 610¬ in. (29.5 x 1565 cm.) and 11¬ x 670 in. (29.5 x 1702
cm.)
Second scroll with a colophon by Kohitsu Ryosa (1572-1662)
authenitificating the work, with crystal scroll ends (2)

$60,000-80,000

PROVENANCE:
Japanese Private Collection

Courtiers of Heian Japan (794-1185) enjoyed singing poetry to
musical accompaniment. The most popular source of poems was
the bilingual anthology known as the Wakan roei shu (Japanese
and Chinese poems to sing). Compiled in the eleventh century
by the preeminent poet and critic Fujiwara no Kinto (966-1041),
it contains over eight hundred Chinese poems by Chinese poets,
Chinese poems by Japanese courtiers, and Japanese poems (waka).
For centuries these short, evocative poems were memorized
and sung at court, into lovers' ears, or at moments when spoken
words were inadequate to express an emotion.

As Ann Yonemura of the Freer/Sackler Gallery has written,
"for the calligrapher, the text of the Wakan roei shu, which
alternates frequently between sequences of Chinese characters
and Japanese kana, is particularly challenging, like a musical
score that demands a high level of technical skill and virtuosity
for performance. The close juxtaposition of poems written in
substantial and structurally stable Chinese characters to waka
verses written in slender, insubstantial lines of kana demands
of the calligraphers a parallel and articulate mastery of both
calligraphic modes." (Yonemura, "The Art of Calligraphy and
the Wakan roei shu" in Rimer and Chaves, op. cit., p. 263)