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Hokku on “New Year’s Crow,” with a Painting of a Courtier

Inscription by Yosa Buson Japanese
Colophon by Matsumura Goshun Japanese
ca. mid-1780s
Not on view
After the death of the poet-painter Yosa Buson, his pupil Matsumura Gekkei (who used the alias Go Shun when creating Chinese-style paintings) was asked to authenticate surviving examples of his master’s handwriting. On the narrow slip of paper placed at the far right of this scroll, Buson had inscribed a hokku (seventeen-syllable poem) alluding to the tradition of welcoming the crow’s first caw as a harbinger of spring and the New Year.

At left, Gekkei added a playful portrait of Tachibana no Suemichi, a poet from the Heian period (794–1185) whom Buson had often depicted after having a peculiar New Year’s dream about him. The hokku reads:

己か羽の　文字もよめたり　初烏

I, too, can read
the characters on the feathers
of the year’s first black crow.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • 与謝蕪村筆　「初烏」句　松村月渓(呉春)筆　老翁図
  • Title: Hokku on “New Year’s Crow,” with a Painting of a Courtier
  • Artist: Inscription by Yosa Buson (Japanese, 1716–1783)
  • Artist: Colophon by Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811)
  • Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
  • Date: ca. mid-1780s
  • Culture: Japan
  • Medium: Hanging scroll: ink and color on paper
  • Dimensions: Image: 7 9/16 × 13 1/8 in. (19.2 × 33.3 cm)
    Overall with mounting: 44 15/16 × 17 15/16 in. (114.1 × 45.6 cm)
    Overall with knobs: 44 15/16 × 20 3/4 in. (114.1 × 52.7 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, 2023
  • Object Number: 2023.583.21
  • Curatorial Department: Asian Art

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