Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Crossing a Mountain Stream by the Bridge
Yosa Buson Japanese
Not on view
A thin stream plunges from the top of a high narrow valley and spreads into a shallow pool across which a long series of small bridges have been laid. Making his way across is a lone scholar, with his traveling hat pushed back. He is probably on his way to the small hut that appears far in the distance at the upper left of the painting, the residence of an old friend and recluse in the mountains. At the top, the Kyoto Confucian scholar Murase Kōtei (1746–1818) inscribed a Chinese-style poem (kanshi) in four seven-character lines:
Who could he be visiting,
this man crossing the bridge with shouldered hat,
but someone who has abandoned the world,
someone who would know the ways of the immortals?
—Trans. Alfred Haft
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