A Mirror of Gathered Seaweed (Mokagami)
Not on view
Albums of exemplary calligraphy specimens, referred to as tekagami, or “mirrors of the hand,” demonstrate the high esteem in which the art of brush writing has been held in Japan, as in East Asia more generally. Such albums, which bring together fragments cut from handscrolls or bound booklets, also served as models of different brush-writing styles for students of calligraphy. The practice of creating such compendia became popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with connoisseurs of calligraphy pasting labels attempting to identify the calligrapher alongside a fragment.
Here the examples by the noted poet Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204) and his even more famous son, Teika (1162–1241)—the most famous literary commentator of early medieval times—reflect their distinctive brush-writing styles.
On view from August 28, 2021–April 24, 2022
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