Three Poems from the Later Collection of Japanese Poems (Gosen wakashū)
Traditionally attributed to Monk Saigyō Japanese
Not on view
Although this rare, early surviving manuscript section of a Heian-period poetry anthology was certainly not written by the esteemed monk-poet Saigyō, based on comparison with accepted examples of his handwriting, in the course of its transmission through the centuries it became associated with him. We can assume that connoisseurs made the connection because the calligraphic style, with its bolder, brusquer forms of kana, a system of syllabic writing, was, in fact, most probably brushed about the time Saigyō was active as a poet of waka, thirty-one-syllable court poems of the type recorded here.
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