Eri's Choice · VD5J
Eri's Choice is a design that does not keep strictly to one style; it is Master Takase's own artistic choice.
爲我有餘宜與人
waga tame ni amari araba yoroshiku hito ni ataubeshi
What I Have Beyond My Need Should Go to Others
What I have beyond my need should go to others: the closing line of a Zen poem on the god of fortune and long life.
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
爲我 (read waga tame ni) is for me. 有餘 (read amari araba) is if there is more than enough. 宜 (read yoroshiku) says what is right, and 與人 (read hito ni ataubeshi) is give to others.
The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, a large dictionary of the Japanese language, defines 有余 as having more than is needed. The Daijisen gives 宜しく with its closing べし as as is right, by all means, a form that comes from the Japanese reading of 宜 in Classical Chinese.
The poem it closes is on Fukurokuju, the god of fortune, stipend and long life. A red-crowned crane cries ten thousand years, and a green-haired creature, which our history takes to be the tortoise, offers a thousand springs. Fortune and stipend come with them and never run out.
Our history reads the three lines before the last as a painting's scene: the crane, the tortoise and the god's gifts of fortune and stipend. As it reads the poem, the last line says what such fortune is for.
Our history read two witnesses at the page, and both give the line in the same words. The anthology 翰林五鳳集, read in its 1916 typeset, titles the poem as inscribed on a painting.
The 1690 print of Ten'in Ryūtaku's poems, in the Kyoto University copy our history read, lists this poem in none of its tables of contents.
Our history hears the Laozi in the line. The Laozi says the sage, having given to others, has the more, and asks who can offer a surplus to the world. The line has the Laozi's words for surplus and for giving. Where the Laozi says for others, the line says for me. The parallel is our history's own; none of the witnesses it read names the Laozi beside the poem.
Our history searched the scanned text of the house's English books and the Internet Archive's full text for Ten'in's names and for Fukurokuju. It found no English of the line, so the English title is its own rendering.
The closing line of a quatrain by the Zen monk Ten'in Ryūtaku 天隠龍沢 (1422–1500) on 福禄寿; its witnesses are a manuscript of his poems whose last piece is dated 1577 and the early Edo anthology of Zen verse 翰林五鳳集.
Learn More About These Words
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 爲我有餘宜與人.
