Document “Preface for the Plum Garden Banquet of a Spring Night”

Written in the hand of Hosoi Kōtaku

1715

Donated by the Homma Family

Hosoi Kōtaku (1658-1735) was a close factotum of Shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, and an author and Confucian scholar in the employ of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu. His skills were acclaimed by none other than Kitajima Setsuzen, a famed pioneer in Chinese-style calligraphy in Japan, and he learned the calligraphy style of Wen Zhengming.

This document is a copy of the poem “Preface for the Plum Garden Banquet of a Spring Night” by Li Bai (701-762), the representative poet of China’s Tang Dynasty.