Don't make me get the fan, son.

"Konbanwa,

My name is gurdymonkey  and though I am but a weak and feeble woman I am worth ten thousand of you. Come out and fight me if you dare. (*)

If you do not care to be haunted by the badass ghosts of Murasaki Shikibu AND Saito Musashibo Benkei, you might want to fix that source citation at the foot of this week's entry. Murasaki-hime did not write The Tale of the Heike. She wrote The Tale of Genji which is not anything close to the same thing.

Thank you,
etc. "

*If he's actually READ it, he will recognize this for a variant on the standard formula for picking a fight in The Tale of the Heike. If he hasn't, he will hopefully cower at my badassity.

You bet your bad ass I sent it.

Heian Japanese calligraphy examples

For didjiman .  For our purposes, the Heian period ends in 1185. Assume T'ang Dynasty influences.

http://web-japan.org/museum/calligra/calligra01/calligra01.html includes a number of examples, including a few from later periods. The first piece, a Nara period list of national treasures, you can probably read, as it's in kanji.  Official documents like this one and sutras tend to be in kanji, from what I understand.
#5 from the Kokin Wakashu (or another page from the same poetry collection) does appear in Uncovering Heian Japan. The paper is decorated with gold and silver "glitter".

Here's another very cursive one from the Kyoto National Museum.    It's the Wakan Roeishu, an anthology of Chinese and Japanese poems and it has ponies. We like ponies.


Did the Chinese write directly over paintings or decorated paper like this or is this a Japanese development? There's a collection of fan papers with sutras copied over the paintings in the Tokyo National Museum, for example.

http://books.google.com/books?id=8hIdhJnWP08C&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=heian+calligraphy&source=bl&ots=XP6E2HSzdr&sig=wU3UOY5Syuia92J4L8MOO4lhw0I&hl=en&ei=qihBTNiqLYq-sQOOwv2zDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false is the Google Books Preview. The front cover , page 222 and 224 can be viewed and show three of the examples discussed.