Kyoudou Chigu Sumiyori〈Hogo〉

The "Torn Xutang": a National Treasure of Chan Calligraphy

Around the year 1264, a Chinese Chan monk in his eightieth year picked up a brush and wrote a short Buddhist teaching for a young Japanese disciple. What survives is a single sheet of paper, 28.5 by 70 centimeters, carrying a few lines of confident running script in black ink. It now hangs in the Tokyo National Museum as a National Treasure, recorded under the formal name Kidō Chigu bokuseki, the calligraphy of Xutang Zhiyu. For four centuries, though, collectors and tea practitioners have called it by a far stranger name: Yabure Kidō, the "Torn Xutang."

The term bokuseki means "ink traces," and in Japan it refers specifically to calligraphy brushed by Zen monks rather than by court calligraphers or professional scribes. A piece of this kind was prized less for technical polish than for the direct contact it offered with the hand and mind of a teacher. That is why one sheet of paper could come to outrank paintings and fine ceramics in the world of the Japanese tea gathering.

The monk who wrote it, and the monk who received it

Xutang Zhiyu (1185–1269), known in Japan as Kidō Chigu, belonged to the Songyuan branch of the Linji school of Chan Buddhism, the lineage that in Japan became Rinzai Zen. He led a succession of monasteries and, late in life, was appointed fortieth abbot of Wanshou-ji on Mount Jing near Hangzhou, among the most prestigious Chan seats in southern China. His authority drew Japanese monks who crossed the sea to train under him.

This sheet was written for one of those visitors. The text is addressed to a "brilliant Zen practitioner from Japan," a description long read as pointing to Mushō Jōshō (1234–1306), a monk of Jōchi-ji in Kamakura. Mushō reached China in 1262 and sailed home in 1265, afterward founding Busshin-ji in Kyoto. Those dates place the writing of the scroll within a narrow window, when Xutang was about eighty.

A second Japanese student mattered even more for the later prestige of Xutang's hand. Nanpo Jōmyō (1235–1308) received his inka, the formal certification that a disciple has grasped the teaching, and carried that lineage back to Japan. From Nanpo descended the Zen of Daitoku-ji and Myōshin-ji in Kyoto. Daitoku-ji in particular grew closely entwined with the tea ceremony, and so any sheet brushed by Xutang himself took on extraordinary value among tea masters.

Why it ranks as a National Treasure

The scroll was designated a National Treasure on 29 March 1952, in the first wave of objects recognized under Japan's postwar cultural property law. Several strengths converge in it. It is an authentic work by one of the great Chan figures of the Southern Song, written at the peak of his standing. It records the direct transmission of Rinzai Zen from China to Japan in the thirteenth century, a pivot in Japanese religious history. And its survival, repaired damage and all, preserves a clear chain of Japanese ownership across four hundred years.

The brushwork rewards a slow look. For a calligrapher of eighty the strokes are surprisingly powerful, the lines thick and unhesitating, the spacing between characters loose rather than measured. There is no decorative flourish here. The appeal lies in the sense that the viewer is watching an old master think on paper, one character at a time.

How a treasure came to be torn

The scroll enters the Japanese record as a cherished possession of Takeno Jōō (1502–1555), the Sakai merchant and tea master who taught Sen no Rikyū. After Jōō it passed to Daimonjiya, a wealthy Kyoto merchant house. In 1637, the fourteenth year of the Kan'ei era, catastrophe struck: a servant shut himself inside the family storehouse, slashed the scroll, and took his own life. The cut was later repaired, but the damage fixed the work's nickname for good. Far from lowering its standing, the grim episode and the unbroken record of who had owned it only deepened the fascination collectors felt.

In the eighteenth century the scroll reached one of the towering names in tea history, Matsudaira Fumai (1751–1818), lord of the Matsue domain and a relentless collector. It stayed with the Matsudaira family of Izumo, present-day Shimane Prefecture, for generations before entering the national collection.

Seeing the work, and the museum around it

Because this is ink on fragile paper, it is never on permanent view. Light-sensitive works like this rotate through display for short stretches, often within the Tokyo National Museum's Asian Gallery (Tōyōkan) during its periodic showings of Chinese painting and calligraphy, and occasionally in major loan exhibitions. Anyone hoping to see the actual scroll should check the museum's exhibition calendar before visiting, since on most days it rests in storage.

The museum itself sits in Ueno Park, a short walk from Ueno Station. The Honkan, or Japanese Gallery, lays out the broad sweep of Japanese art, while the Tōyōkan covers China, Korea, and the rest of Asia. Around the museum, Ueno Park holds the National Museum of Western Art, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, a famous spring cherry-blossom avenue, and Shinobazu Pond. A single day in the park easily fills with art, greenery, and quiet corners between galleries.