Three Poems from the Later Collection of Japanese Poems (Gosen wakashū)

Three Poems from the Later Collection of Japanese Poems (Gosen wakashū)

Monk Saigyō

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although this rare, early surviving manuscript section of a Heian-period poetry anthology was certainly not written by the esteemed monk-poet Saigyō, based on comparison with accepted examples of his handwriting, in the course of its transmission through the centuries it became associated with him. We can assume that connoisseurs made the connection because the calligraphic style, with its bolder, brusquer forms of kana, a system of syllabic writing, was, in fact, most probably brushed about the time Saigyō was active as a poet of waka, thirty-one-syllable court poems of the type recorded here.


Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Three Poems from the Later Collection of Japanese Poems (Gosen wakashū)Three Poems from the Later Collection of Japanese Poems (Gosen wakashū)Three Poems from the Later Collection of Japanese Poems (Gosen wakashū)Three Poems from the Later Collection of Japanese Poems (Gosen wakashū)Three Poems from the Later Collection of Japanese Poems (Gosen wakashū)

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.