Ashide E Wakan Roei Sho (Illustrated by Fujiwara No

A Scroll Signed on the Second Day of the Fourth Month, 1160

At the end of the second of two handscrolls kept at the Kyoto National Museum, a brief note in ink records the moment the work was finished: the second day of the fourth month of Eiryaku 1, the year 1160, signed by a court official named Koreyuki. That single line of colophon makes the Ashide-e Wakan Roeisho one of the most securely dated masterpieces of Japanese calligraphy. We know who wrote it, and almost to the hour, when.

The writer was Fujiwara no Koreyuki, sixth head of the Sesonji family, the hereditary line of court calligraphers descended from the great Fujiwara no Yukinari (972 to 1027). The text he copied was the Wakan Roeisho, better known today as the Wakan Roeishu, an anthology of roughly 804 Chinese couplets and Japanese waka poems compiled in the early eleventh century by the courtier Fujiwara no Kinto. These were poems meant to be chanted aloud at banquets and gatherings, and the anthology became required reading for every educated aristocrat of the Heian court.

Two scrolls survive here as a complete set. The first covers the four seasons; the second gathers miscellaneous themes. A full Heian-period copy of this anthology, intact from beginning to end, is a rarity in itself. What lifts these scrolls into a class of their own is the paper beneath the writing.

Ashide-e: Poems Hiding Inside Pictures

Each sheet of paper was decorated before Koreyuki ever touched it with his brush. Painters laid down underdrawings in azurite blue, malachite green, red ochre, and silver: reeds bending at the water's edge, waterfowl drifting between them, birds in flight, rocks, willows, flowing streams, and the curious motif of cart wheels half submerged in water, a design called katawaguruma that Heian artisans loved.

Look closer and the reeds begin to behave strangely. Some of those stalks and bird shapes are not plants or animals at all but written characters, stretched and bent until they dissolve into the landscape. This technique is called ashide, literally "reed hand," a form of pictorial writing that flourished among aristocrats of the late Heian period. The disguised characters are said to echo words from the very poems inscribed above them, turning each sheet into a gentle puzzle. A reader chanting a verse about autumn geese might suddenly notice the word itself camouflaged among the painted birds.

This is decoration as wit. The pleasure was never meant to arrive all at once.

Why It Became a National Treasure

The Japanese government designated the two scrolls a National Treasure on June 9, 1951, under the category of calligraphy and classical books. The reasons are easy to list and hard to overstate.

First, the scrolls are the only surviving work whose attribution to Koreyuki is considered certain. He was celebrated in his own lifetime, chosen to inscribe the ceremonial screen panels for the enthronement rites of Emperor Nijo in 1159 and Emperor Rokujo in 1166, yet nothing else from his brush survives with comparable proof. The signed colophon, reading "second day of the fourth month, Eiryaku 1, written by Shino no Shokyo Koreyuki," anchors the entire body of knowledge about his style.

Second, the calligraphy itself rewards study. Koreyuki varies the pressure of his brush constantly, swelling and thinning the line so that each column of text carries its own rhythm. Scholars describe his hand as combining the fluency of classic Heian court style with a new weight and substance characteristic of the late twelfth century.

Third, the marriage of text and ashide-e decoration preserves, on paper, the playful aesthetic intelligence of the Heian aristocracy at its height. Few objects communicate that culture so directly.

The Man Behind the Brush

Koreyuki, son of the calligrapher Fujiwara no Sadanobu, rose to the junior fifth rank and the post of director in the Ministry of the Imperial Household. He is thought to have died around 1175. Beyond his brushwork, he left two written legacies that shaped Japanese culture for centuries. His Yakaku Teikinsho is regarded as the oldest surviving Japanese treatise on calligraphy, composed as a set of secret family teachings for his daughter. He is also credited with the Genji Shaku, the earliest known commentary on The Tale of Genji.

That daughter deserves her own mention. She became the poet known as Kenreimon'in Ukyo no Daibu, lady-in-waiting to Empress Tokuko and author of a celebrated poetic memoir chronicling the fall of the Taira clan. Reading the scrolls with this family in mind, you sense a household where ink, music, and literature were the daily air.

The scrolls themselves passed through distinguished hands in later centuries. They were long held by the Ota family, lords of the Kakegawa domain in Totomi Province, and are also said to have belonged to the modern industrialist and collector Hara Sankei before entering the national collections.

Seeing the Scrolls

The Ashide-e Wakan Roeisho belongs to the Kyoto National Museum and is not on permanent display. Like most Heian manuscripts, it is light sensitive, and the museum rotates it into thematic exhibitions only occasionally, sometimes with intervals of several years. Checking the museum's exhibition schedule before a trip is essential if the scrolls are your goal.

There is a generous consolation. The National Institutes for Cultural Heritage has photographed the scrolls in high resolution for its e-Museum website, where you can magnify the paper until individual brush hairs and flecks of silver pigment become visible. Studying the images first makes any eventual encounter with the original far richer; you will already know where the characters hide among the reeds.

When the scrolls are not on view, the museum's Heisei Chishinkan Wing still offers one of Japan's finest standing introductions to calligraphy and decorated sutras, with rotating displays drawn from a collection of over 14,000 works.

Around the Kyoto National Museum

The museum sits in the Higashiyama district of Kyoto, an area dense with sights that pair naturally with a morning among Heian manuscripts. Directly across the street stands Sanjusangendo, the 120-meter hall lined with 1,001 statues of the thousand-armed Kannon, itself a National Treasure of the same twelfth century that produced Koreyuki's scrolls. A ten-minute walk north leads to Toyokuni Shrine and the great bell of Hokoji; a similar walk south reaches Chishakuin, head temple of the Chisan branch of Shingon Buddhism, with its celebrated wall paintings by Hasegawa Tohaku.

Access is straightforward: about a seven-minute walk from Shichijo Station on the Keihan Line, or a short ride on city bus 206 or 208 from Kyoto Station to the Hakubutsukan Sanjusangendo-mae stop.