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Thirty-six Immortal Poets (三十六歌仙)

By Sakai Hōitsu

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Artist

Sakai Hōitsu

(酒井抱一; 1761–1828)

Catalogue information

Edo period, 1824

Handscroll; ink and light color on paper

29.5 x 827.6 cm (11 5/8 in. x 27 ft. 1 7/8 in.)

Donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York by the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation in 2015

Literature

McKelway 2012, pp. 126–27, no. 36

McKelway, Matthew P.

2012

Silver Wind: The Arts of Sakai Hōitsu (1761–1828). Exh. cat. New York: Japan Society Gallery.

See full bibliography

Additional details

Text

by Hōitsu

[at right, poems by Sarumaru Dayū]

[Sarumarushū 3] Sarumaru // Everyone has reasons / to change his heart / like Tsukikusa grass shifts its colors.

[Kokin wakashū 215] Treading through the autumn leaves in the deepest mountains, / I hear the belling of the lonely deer— / then it is that autumn is sad.

[at left, poems by Ono no Komachi]

[Kokin wakashū 938] I have sunk to the / bottom, / and like the rootless / shifting water weeds / should the currents summon me / I too would drift away.

[Kokin wakashū 113] A life in vain. / My looks, talents faded / like these cherry blossoms / paling in the endless rains / that I gaze out upon, alone.

Signature

[at end of scroll] Recorded by Uge-an [Ukaan] Hōitsu, tenth month, winter of 1824