Three poems from the Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern (Kokin wakashū)
Traditionally attributed to Fujiwara no Tameyori Japanese
Not on view
Connoisseurs in the past attributed this work to the hand of courtier-poet Fujiwara no Tameyori. In doing so, they seem to have made a speculative connection between the content of the calligraphic fragment, in this case poems from Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern (ca. 905), imaging that it was from an early transcription of this literary classic. This style of court calligraphy did not appear until two hundred years later. Each of the three anonymously composed poems is rendered in two columns.
The poem on the far left reads:
Tobu tori no
koe mo kikoenu
okuyama no
fukaki kokoro o
hito wa shiranan
If only my lover
knew my deepest feelings,
deep as these remote hills,
where even the songs
of birds can’t be heard.
—Trans. John T. Carpenter
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