The Thousand-Character Classic (Senjimon)

The Thousand-Character Classic (Japanese: Senjimon; Chinese Qianzi wen 千字文) has long served as a foundational learning text throughout East Asia. Formulated by a certain Zhou Xingsi 周興嗣 (ca. 470–521), an official of the short-lived Liang dynasty, the Classic summarizes Chinese traditional knowledge from Confucian ethics and history to astronomy and geography. The Classic consists of 250 rhymed verses of four characters each, and the rhyme scheme of the verses makes it easy to chant and memorize. No character appears more than once, making the Classic a standard text for generations of elementary students, providing simultaneously a compendium of orthodox knowledge and an opportunity to practice the writing of a full thousand characters.

The colophon (see Catalogue Entry below) gives evidence that this work may well date to about 1751, when Taiga was twenty-nine years of age. Taiga copied the Thousand-Character Classic many times and in many different scripts during his forties and fifties, but this version is of particular importance because of its relatively early date and its mastery of the Chinese cursive mode.