Gekimosho, a Treatise on Linked Verse

One Volume, an Important Cultural Property since 1991

Gekimosho, a Treatise on Linked Verse (撃蒙抄, Gekimosho) is a Nanbokucho-period manuscript held at the Tenri Central Library, 1050 Somanouchi-cho, Tenri City, Nara Prefecture, listed as an Important Cultural Property on 21 June 1991. The listing is as an Important Cultural Property, not a National Treasure, and the owner is the Tenri University corporation.

The quantity is one volume. The Agency records that Nijo Yoshimoto drafted the work in the seventh month of 1358 at the command of Emperor Go-Kogon, as a treatise on linked verse.

A colophon at the end gives the twentieth day of the eleventh month of 1366 as the date of copying, eight years after the work was written and within the author's lifetime.

Three Categories in the Field, and Then Others

Which category the manuscript belongs to is not settled.

The category field reads: historical materials, calligraphy and books, ancient documents, and then others.

Three categories run together separated by slashes, with a further word for others after them.

With the Nasu stele, Tochigi Prefecture placed a stone monument among ancient documents. That falls within a single category.

The Engishiki and the Lotus Sutra scroll at Zentsuji are calligraphy and books, as is the biography of Huineng.

This manuscript spans three, with others appended. A book explaining how to compose linked verse does not sit within the existing divisions.

Set Against Another Copy, Only This One Is Complete

Another manuscript of the same work is brought in for comparison.

The record notes that this treatise, with one other, is known as an early work of Nijo Yoshimoto on linked verse, and that copies of it are few.

It continues that one other copy has been described, from a private collection, but that it has leaves out of order and passages missing, so that the Tenri copy is known as the only sound text.

Disorder in the leaves and gaps in the text. The other copy has them; this one does not.

With the sea-beast mirror, another from the same mould survives in the Shosoin, the two having passed down separately. Those two stand as equals.

Here two copies are compared, the shortcomings of one are stated, and the other is called the only sound text. Completeness supplies the reason for the value.

Traces of Paper Split for Repair, and of Characters Written Back In

A later hand is recorded as it stands.

The text runs seven to eight lines to a half-sheet, with six and nine here and there, written throughout in one flowing hand, a finely made book.

However, the record continues, when the sheets were split for repair in the early modern period, characters that had faded were written in again, and the traces of that can be seen.

Splitting means peeling a sheet thin. During the repair the sheets were split, and faded characters were written back in. Those marks remain visible.

On the cherry-laced armour, two repairs were recorded in ink on the reverse of the lacing. That is a record of having repaired.

Here the repairing hand itself sits on the text. A reading gloss for one word also stands in the commentary within lenticular brackets, the second such case met, after the gilded bronze staff head.

Seeing It

The library holds the manuscript and the university corporation owns it. With the iron pagoda, the Nara National Museum held it and Saidaiji owned it. Here it is a university and its library.

The make is described closely: bound in gathered leaves, with a later cover of dark blue paper in gold brocade patterned with hares among flowers and flower lozenges, a title slip attached, and the inside cover painted with silver waves and gold maple leaves scattered among butterflies and dragonflies.

The paper is mulberry, dyed in pale yellow, pale brown and off-white by turns with plain white sheets among them. Sheets of differing colour are mixed.

The quotations number 170, of which six opening verses and forty-one linking verses also appear in an anthology of the same tradition: forty-seven of the 170 overlap.

Of provenance, the record notes that the volume was presented to a shrine in Sakai in the eighth month of 1729. It is a library holding, not kept on permanent display. Check before travelling.