Poem in Chinese about Sugar

Born in Kyoto, Kokan Shiren had his early Zen training at temples in that city, among them Kenninji, Nanzenji, and Tōfukuji. He later traveled east to Kamakura, where he stayed at Engakuji and studied under the celebrated Chinese master Yishan Yining. With extensive training in the fundamentals of Zen, Kokan would go on to become a leading figure of Japanese Buddhism, serving as abbot of many important temples, including Entsūiji, Tōfukuji, and Nanzenji. Kokan also wrote numerous texts; his Genkō shakusho stands out as a richly detailed history of Japanese Buddhism.

Among Kokan's calligraphic works, a transcription of an essay by the Chinese scholar Han Yu (768–824), at Tōfukuji, is perhaps the most renowned. An outstanding work displaying a fully mature style, the Tōfukuji piece reveals the strong influence of the Northern Song calligrapher Huang Tingjian (1045–1105). In fact, Kokan appears to have owned several of Huang Tingjian's works and to have added colophons to them, singling out this master's calligraphy among the numerous styles current in Song China for emulation (see cat. no. 34). Other notable examples from Kokan's brush—such as those in the Mitsui Bunko Library and the Masaki Museum—also reveal a debt to the Chinese master and share certain appealing characteristics: crisp brushwork, long horizontal strokes brushed with a modulated rhythm, and an overall rightward­ leaning tendency. These elements are found in the present seven-character quatrain. A close comparison with Kokan's other works reveals that this calligraphy, formerly in the collection of the Umezawa Memorial Museum, Tokyo, is brushed at a slightly quicker pace.

Kokan's poem reads as follows:

Now let fire and water fight it out: Heat and boil it many times,
It will form naturally;
Don't say that it always tastes like honey.
When you roll your tongue
It may also taste sour.

Sugar[1]

In addition to calligraphy in the style of Huang Tingjian, Kokan was also known to brush large-scale characters in a bold style, as seen in Pine Barrier in the Gotoh Museum. This bold manner was popular among Japanese Zen priests from the Kamakura to the early Muromachi period, but what distinguishes Kokan's calligraphy in this style was the rounded edges of his characters. This rounding had the effect of softening the overall impression and might be thought of as a manifestation of the Japanization of the genre. Since this style became widely practiced only in the mid-Edo period, Kokan's calligraphy was well ahead of its time. At present Kokan's oeuvre, which includes both letters and poetic inscriptions, numbers over twenty works.

Seal: Kokan
Literature: Shimizu and Rosenfield 1984–85, no. 43

Tadayuki Kasashima. In Miyeko Murase, The Written Image. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002, cat. no. 37.

[1] Translated in Shimizu and Rosenfield 1984–85, p. 127.

Sylvan Barnet and William Burto , Cambridge, MA (until 2014; donated to MMA).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Written Image: Japanese Calligraphy and Paintings from the Sylvan Barnet and William Burto Collection," October 1, 2002–March 2, 2003.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Brush Writing in the Arts of Japan," August 17, 2013–January 12, 2014.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Discovering Japanese Art: American Collectors and the Met," February 14 - September 27, 2015.