Michi Ono-Style Three-Piece Brush Poem Scroll by Hakuji

One Scroll, Three Scripts: The Santai Hakushi Shikan by Ono no Michikaze

Of everything the calligrapher Ono no Michikaze (894-966) left behind, only a single work preserves his hand in kaisho, the formal standard script. That work is the Santai Hakushi Shikan, a paper handscroll about 30 centimeters tall and roughly 2.4 meters long, designated a National Treasure of Japan on June 22, 1955. It now belongs to the Masaki Art Museum in Tadaoka, a small town on Osaka Bay between Sakai and Kishiwada.

The title translates as "Poems of Bai in Three Scripts." Michikaze selected six poems by the Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi (772-846), known in Japan as Hakurakuten, from volume 53 of his collected works, the Hakushi Monju. He then wrote two poems each in three different scripts: twelve lines of kaisho (standard script), sixteen lines of gyosho (semi-cursive), and eighteen lines of sosho (cursive), forty-six lines in all across eight joined sheets of paper.

A thousand years on, the ink still reads as if the brush had just lifted from the page.

Michikaze and the Birth of a Japanese Hand

Heian-period courtiers learned to write by copying Chinese masters, above all Wang Xizhi, the fourth-century calligrapher whose style defined elegance across East Asia. Michikaze studied that tradition so thoroughly that contemporaries reportedly called him a reincarnation of Wang Xizhi. What he did with it mattered more: he softened the angular Chinese line into something rounder and warmer, laying the foundation of wayo, the distinctly Japanese style of calligraphy that later generations refined.

Together with Fujiwara no Sukemasa (944-998) and Fujiwara no Yukinari (972-1027), Michikaze is counted among the Sanseki, the "Three Brush Traces" of the Heian court. His surviving works are few. The Byobu Dodai, draft inscriptions for a folding screen, and the Tamaizumi-jo, both now in the Imperial Household Agency's Sannomaru Shozokan collection, are accepted as being by the same hand as this scroll, which is one reason scholars treat the attribution to Michikaze with confidence even though the scroll itself bears no signature.

Many visitors know Michikaze without realizing it. He appears on the November "rain" card in hanafuda playing cards, watching a frog leap again and again for a willow branch. The story, a later legend rather than documented fact, has the discouraged calligrapher resolving to persist after seeing the frog finally succeed.

Bai Juyi's poetry, meanwhile, was the height of literary fashion at the Heian court. His verses were prized for their clarity and musicality, and copying them served as both literary devotion and writing practice. Murasaki Shikibu wove his lines into The Tale of Genji; Michikaze gave them physical form in ink.

Why This Scroll Is a National Treasure

The designation rests on a combination of rarity and quality that no other work can duplicate. Because the scroll contains Michikaze's only surviving kaisho, it functions as the sole physical evidence of how the founder of Japanese-style calligraphy handled the most disciplined of the three scripts. Lose this scroll and an entire dimension of his art disappears from the record.

The three-script format also turns the scroll into a comparative study written by the master himself. The same brush, the same poet, the same paper, yet three registers of expression: the kaisho measured and upright, the gyosho relaxing into linked strokes, the sosho flowing with an almost conversational ease. The character forms remain composed throughout, which has led some scholars to suggest the scroll may have been written as a model for calligraphy practice, though this remains a matter of interpretation.

The lines are soft without being weak. Where Chinese standard script of the Tang period tends toward architectural severity, Michikaze's kaisho here carries a gentle roundness in its turns and endings, the wayo sensibility visible even within the strictest script. The Masaki Art Museum's own commentary points to this supple line quality across all three scripts as the clearest expression of Michikaze's legacy as the originator of the Japanese style.

Provenance adds another layer. The scroll is said to have passed through the hands of Kobori Enshu, the great early Edo-period tea master and arbiter of taste, before entering the collection of the Konoike family, the wealthy Osaka merchant house. Accounts of the earlier transmission vary among sources, but the Konoike connection is well documented: when postwar economic upheaval forced old merchant families to part with their treasures, the collector Masaki Takayuki purchased this scroll directly from the Konoike holdings.

What to Look For

Start at the right end of the scroll, as a Heian reader would, with the kaisho section. Notice how each character sits independently, fully formed, yet the brush pressure swells and tapers within individual strokes. This is not the mechanical regularity of a printed page. Horizontal strokes lift slightly at their ends; hooks curl with a softness that Chinese models of the same era rarely show.

Then watch the writing loosen. In the gyosho section, strokes begin to connect and abbreviate. By the sosho section the characters spill downward in continuous gestures, several forms sometimes joined in a single movement of the brush.

The transitions themselves are the spectacle. Few works of calligraphy anywhere allow you to watch one artist modulate through three levels of formality in a single sitting.

Look also at the paper joins. The scroll is assembled from eight sheets, and following the seams gives a sense of the physical labor of the format, the scroll unrolled section by section under the writer's left hand as the right hand worked.

One practical note: like most works on paper of this age, the scroll is not on permanent display. The Masaki Art Museum operates on a schedule of seasonal exhibitions, generally in spring and autumn, and closes entirely between them. The scroll appears only when an exhibition theme calls for it, sometimes for a limited span of weeks. Checking the museum's exhibition announcements before planning a visit is essential.

The Masaki Art Museum and Its Founder

The museum opened in November 1968 in Tadaoka, which holds the distinction of being the smallest town by area in Japan. Its founder, Masaki Takayuki (1895-1985), was born into a village headman's family in this textile-producing district of southern Osaka and made his fortune in construction and cinema management. In the unsettled years after World War II, when banking restrictions forced former merchant dynasties to sell long-held art, Masaki stepped in. Among his purchases from the Konoike family were three works of calligraphy later designated National Treasures: this scroll, a second Hakushi Shikan by Fujiwara no Yukinari, and Zen calligraphy by the monk Daito Kokushi.

That a private collector in a small industrial town preserved these works intact, then donated his entire collection along with land and buildings to establish a public foundation, is one of the quieter success stories of Japanese cultural preservation. The collection today numbers about 1,300 items, including 3 National Treasures and 13 Important Cultural Properties, with particular depth in medieval Zen ink painting, calligraphy by Zen monks, and tea ceremony utensils.

The museum's holding of two National Treasure Hakushi Shikan scrolls deserves emphasis. Visitors here can, when exhibitions align, compare Bai Juyi's poetry as written by two of the three Sanseki masters: Michikaze, who began the wayo style, and Yukinari, who perfected it. No other institution offers that pairing.

Next to the exhibition building stands the Masaki Memorial Residence, the founder's 1949 home with its tea rooms, registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2014. Parts of the residence open to museum visitors on weekends and holidays during exhibition periods.

Around Tadaoka

The museum is a 15-minute walk from Tadaoka Station on the Nankai Main Line, about 30 minutes from Namba in central Osaka. A taxi from neighboring Izumiotsu Station takes about 7 minutes. Drivers can exit the Hanshin Expressway Bayshore Route at Sukematsu (from Osaka) or Kishiwada-kita (from Wakayama), though parking is limited and the museum recommends public transport.

The southern Osaka coast rewards a longer day. The Kuboso Memorial Museum of Arts in nearby Izumi holds its own pair of National Treasures, including a celebrated Song dynasty celadon. The Osaka Prefectural Museum of Yayoi Culture in Izumi presents archaeology from one of Japan's most important prehistoric settlement sites. And Sakai, birthplace of the tea master Sen no Rikyu, lies a short ride up the Nankai line; the tea culture that shaped Masaki Takayuki's collecting grew from this same stretch of coastline.

For travelers arriving via Kansai International Airport, Tadaoka sits conveniently along the rail corridor toward Osaka, making the museum a workable first or last stop on a Kansai itinerary, exhibition schedule permitting.