Block · kaisho 楷書 · VB6C
Block or kaisho (楷書) styles are the most common and recognizable styles. Block styles are easily read and are noted for their angular form and their vertical and horizontal lines.
A world of grief and pain:
Flowers bloom;
Even then ...[1]
ku no shaba ya
sakura ga sakeba
saita tote
苦の娑婆や
桜が咲けば
咲いたとて
issa
一茶
This world of suffering; if the cherry blooms, even granting it has bloomed.
by Master Eri Takase
Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Eri Takase received the rank of Shihan, master, from two calligraphy societies, the Bokuteki-kai and Bunka-shodō, and won best-of-category awards in all-Japan national competitions. She has created calligraphy for people around the world for more than thirty years, and with your order she will be creating calligraphy for you.
In a ritual as old as calligraphy itself, Master Takase prepares the ink, meditatively rubbing the ink stick against the stone until it reaches the perfect consistency for the paper. Then, properly loading the brush with ink, she brushes your scroll. And only when the scroll is just right and meets her approval, she signs it and affixes her seal, completing your original scroll.
12 1/4" × 43" (31 × 109 cm) Japanese Scrolls
The scrolls have woven damask borders and special layered Japanese paper (washi), designed to last generations by a scroll maker in Gifu, Japan, with whom we have worked for over two decades.
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Your scroll arrives boxed, with a printed insert describing the haiku in detail.
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Explanation
苦の娑婆や桜が咲けば咲いたとて holds pain and beauty in a single breath. 娑婆 is the Buddhist word for this world, from the Sanskrit sahā, the land to be endured, and 苦の娑婆 was Kobayashi Issa's stock phrase for it. とて at the end is a shrug, even granting that. Both readings, the pessimistic and the optimistic, sit inside that one particle, and the verse does not say which.
References:
[1] Translation by R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1 (Hokuseido Press, 1949), p. 177.
The earliest writing of the verse known to the witnesses read here is in the 1819 part of Issa's verse journal, the 八番日記, among the verses of the tenth month and in a plainer form; the cherry form on this scroll is the one on a pair of silk hangings Ogiwara Seisensui attributes to him, written over a seated figure he calls the self-portrait Issa liked to draw.
Learn More About This Haiku
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 苦の娑婆や桜が咲けば咲いたとて.
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