Scroll of Poems by Yukinari Fujiwara

A Thousand-Year-Old Scroll in Japan's Smallest Town

Tadaoka, a coastal municipality of roughly four square kilometers south of Osaka, is often cited as the smallest town in Japan by area. It is the last place most travelers would expect to find a National Treasure of Heian-period calligraphy. Yet inside the Masaki Art Museum, a 15-minute walk through quiet residential streets from Tadaoka Station, rests the Hakushi Shikan: a handscroll of poems by the Tang Chinese poet Bai Juyi, brushed by Fujiwara no Yukinari (972-1027), one of the three greatest calligraphers of classical Japan.

The scroll was designated a National Treasure on June 22, 1955. Scholars know it as the Go-Saga-in version, because a colophon attached to the scroll records that it once belonged to Retired Emperor Go-Saga (1220-1272). A medieval emperor treasured this roll of paper; a twentieth-century collector from the Osaka countryside acquired it; and today anyone with a 700-yen admission ticket can stand before it when it goes on display.

The Calligrapher Who Dreamed of His Master

Yukinari belonged to the powerful Fujiwara clan, but his early life was anything but smooth. He lost his father and grandfather young, and his career stalled for years before he rose, eventually reaching senior court rank as a trusted administrator under the regent Fujiwara no Michinaga, the most powerful man of the age. Court tradition holds that Yukinari died on the very same day as Michinaga, in the twelfth month of 1027.

His true legacy, though, was written in ink. Together with Ono no Michikaze (894-966) and Fujiwara no Sukemasa (944-998), Yukinari is counted among the Sanseki, the "Three Brush Traces" of the Heian court. The three are credited with transforming calligraphy in Japan. Earlier generations had modeled their writing closely on Chinese masters such as Wang Xizhi. The Sanseki softened those angular Chinese forms into something rounder, gentler, and unmistakably Japanese: the style known as wayo, which Yukinari is said to have brought to completion.

Yukinari never met Michikaze, who died several years before he was born, but he revered him to an unusual degree. In his diary, the Gonki, Yukinari recorded a dream in which Michikaze appeared and personally transmitted the secrets of the brush to him. The school of calligraphy Yukinari founded, the Sesonji school, served emperors and aristocrats for centuries after his death.

And what did a Heian master choose to write? Chinese poetry. Bai Juyi (772-846), known in Japan as Haku Rakuten, was by far the most beloved foreign poet at the Heian court. His collected works appear in The Pillow Book and in Murasaki Shikibu's diary, and his line about remembering a friend "in times of snow, moon, and flowers" gave Japanese aesthetics one of its most enduring phrases, setsugekka. Copying Bai Juyi's verses in elegant script was both a literary exercise and an act of devotion to beauty itself.

Why This Scroll Is a National Treasure

Only three works of calligraphy attributed to Yukinari's own hand hold National Treasure status: a Bai Juyi scroll in the Tokyo National Museum, a fragment of writing preserved at Honnoji temple in Kyoto, and this scroll in Tadaoka. The Tokyo scroll carries an appraisal by Yukinari's own descendant, the connoisseur Fujiwara no Sadanobu, and is regarded as securely authentic. The Masaki scroll lacks such direct documentation, but specialists consider its brushwork so close to Yukinari's confirmed style that the attribution carries strong credibility. The Agency for Cultural Affairs registers it simply as "Hakushi Shikan, written by Fujiwara no Yukinari."

The colophon naming Retired Emperor Go-Saga matters as much as the brushwork. It places the scroll in imperial hands by the thirteenth century, some two hundred years after Yukinari's death, and confirms that medieval courtiers already prized it as a model of the classical hand. Provenance of this depth is rare even among National Treasures.

There is a second reason this scroll carries weight. The Masaki Art Museum also owns the Santai Hakushi Shikan, a National Treasure scroll of Bai Juyi's poems written by Ono no Michikaze in three script styles. One small private museum thus holds Bai Juyi scrolls by two of the three Sanseki masters: the founder of the wayo style and the man who perfected it. Nowhere else can the beginning and the culmination of classical Japanese calligraphy be compared side by side in a single collection.

What to Look For

Viewing Heian calligraphy rewards patience. Stand close to the glass and follow a single column of characters downward.

Yukinari's line is the first thing specialists mention: the strokes thicken and thin without strain, and each character settles into a rounded, balanced shape. Where Michikaze's writing keeps a certain plump warmth and Sukemasa's dashes off with nervous energy, Yukinari's hand is slender, even, and composed. He is said to have held the brush at a consistent slight tilt, a technique called sokuhitsu, which produces soft turns at the corners of characters rather than sharp angular snaps. The result reads as effortless, though nothing about writing a long scroll without a single correction is effortless.

Notice, too, how the columns hold their vertical alignment across the entire roll. Within each character the brush moves freely; within each line, discipline never slips. Commentators have long read Yukinari's personality into this combination, pointing to a courtier who rose to high office without losing his modesty.

One practical note: the scroll is not on permanent view. The museum mounts two exhibitions a year, in spring and autumn, and rotates its collection by theme. The Yukinari scroll appears only in certain exhibitions, most memorably in 2015, when both National Treasure Bai Juyi scrolls were shown together. Check the museum's website for the current exhibition before planning a visit around this specific work. Even when the scroll is resting, the museum's rotating displays of medieval ink painting, Zen monks' calligraphy, and tea utensils make the trip worthwhile.

Around the Museum

The Masaki Art Museum opened in 1968 to house the collection of Takayuki Masaki (1895-1985), a local landowner and businessman who assembled some 1,300 works of East Asian art in a single postwar lifetime, including three National Treasures and thirteen Important Cultural Properties. Masaki was a practitioner of the tea ceremony, and his eye favored the austere world of Zen ink painting and tea aesthetics. He designed the museum buildings himself, and the small galleries have the hush of a tea room rather than the scale of a public institution.

Adjacent to the museum stands the former Masaki residence, a registered Tangible Cultural Property with a tea house and garden. Parts of it open to visitors on weekends and holidays during exhibition periods.

Getting there is straightforward. Tadaoka Station on the Nankai Main Line is about 15 minutes on foot from the museum, and the same rail line runs directly to Kansai International Airport and to Namba in central Osaka. Travelers with a broader itinerary can pair the visit with Kishiwada, a few stations south, where a reconstructed castle keep overlooks the town famous for its September Danjiri float festival. Sakai, to the north, was the merchant city of the tea master Sen no Rikyu, whose portrait (an Important Cultural Property) belongs to the Masaki collection. Following the tea culture thread through Sakai and Tadaoka in one day makes a coherent and uncrowded excursion away from Osaka's busier sights.