Cursive · sōsho 草書 · VC5J
Cursive or sōsho (草書) styles are the most simplified styles and Master Takase's favorite. While very beautiful, these styles are often difficult to read even by specialists.
Skinny frog,
don't lose:
Issa is here
yasegaeru
makeru na issa
kore ni ari
やせ蛙
負けるな一茶
これにあり
issa
一茶
Skinny frog, don't lose: Issa is here.
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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Explanation
Issa watches frogs in a frog battle, the dictionaries' word for frogs crowding together to mate, which looks like a fight. He cheers on a thin one, tells it not to lose, and announces himself by name.
The diary dates the verse to the twentieth of the fourth month, 16 May 1816. The diary's entry for that day reads, in full, fair.
Issa wrote the verse twice in his diary. It is among the drafts he sent his patron Natsume Seibi for marking, and he copied it again in a late notebook.
The national primary-school reader of 1937 set the verse as やせ蛙まけるな一茶これにあり. The form on this scroll is that one, with 負けるな, which prints of 1897, 1902 and 1925 also use.
The diary files the verse among summer verses, by the old calendar. Today the デジタル大辞泉 quotes the verse under the frog, a seasonal word of spring.
Basil Hall Chamberlain put the verse into English in 1902: Emaciated frog! be not worsted in fight:—Issa is here. Michel Revon's French note of 1910 has Issa rescue a frog attacked by another animal. No Japanese witness read for this history tells that story.
Kobayashi Issa, in his diary, the 七番日記, among the verses of the fourth month of 文化13 (1816), under the headnote 蛙たゝかひ見ニまかる四月廿日也けり, in the spelling 瘦蛙まけるな一茶是ニ有; the place 竹の塚 in Musashi stands in the headnote of a copy made by his pupil 湯本希杖 in 1827, and in no witness in Issa's hand read for this history.
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 やせ蛙負けるな一茶これにあり.
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