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Calligraphy of a Poem by Ono no Komachi

c. 1770
Ike Taiga (Japanese, 1723–1776)
This is a rare example of Taiga's large-scale calligraphy in the Japanese hiragana syllabary. The four Chinese characters at the beginning are the name of the ninth-century poetess Ono no Komachi, and the rest is the hiragana syllabic text of one of her verses. This verse is one of her best known:

Was it that I fell asleep
Longing for him
That he appeared?
Had I known it was a dream
I should not have awakened.


Object Details

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