Poems from the “Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern,” known as the “Murasame Fragments" (Murasame-gire)
Traditionally attributed to Nijō Tameyo Japanese
Not on view
The fluid but crisp and unerringly precise kana style of this writing, with its abrupt turns of the brush and contrasting widths, bespeaks a stylistic shift in early medieval calligraphy. It was so prized as a calligraphic model that pages or even parts of pages were extracted from surviving volumes and lovingly remounted as hanging scrolls or calligraphy albums. Among the three waka poems included is the famous verse by Ki no Tsurayuki that was also in the immensely popular anthology One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets (Hyakunin isshu):
Hito wa isa
kokoro mo shirazu
furusato wa
hana zo mukashi no
ka ni nioikeru
As for people, I can’t plumb
the depths of their hearts,
but when back in my hometown,
the plum blossoms bring back
a fragrance of the fond past.
—trans. by John T. Carpenter
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