The Chinese style poem on the scroll roughly translates as follows: “My waistrobe is short, but my outer garments are long: Free in spirit, without any worries, I am well prepared to live at my own pace. When the children on the streets see me, they clap their hands and raise their voices, singing the songs that accompany their ball playing.” It is a verse that the Zen priest and poet Ryokan cherished and inscribed many times. “Waistrobe” (kunsu) and “outer garments” (hensan) refer to clothing items of Buddhist monks, which came in sets of inner and outer layers. The wording used here implies a set that is disheveled. Yet Ryokan was comfortable about his appearance. The expression “toto” in the second line of the original suggests a state of not depending on anything, of complete inner freedom. This word was also used by Ryokan’s dharma teacher in a poem he dedicated to his disciple as a proof of dharma transmission, but we might be justified to read it here as a straightforward reference to the priest’s state of mind. “Gotsugotsu” in the same line is a term used during Zen meditation. It refers to the top of a mountain where not a single tree would grow, in other words an unmovable state. Outwardly, he appears disheveled, but in his heart, he is calm and cannot be worried by anything. These are Zen ideals that Ryokan tried to realize in his everyday life.

Ryokan is known to have been fond of children. When he left his house, he would often take a temari ball with him. Ryokan tended to often forget or lose his possessions, and according to anecdotes, he wrote down lists of the things he was carrying around, including, for instance, the word temari. Perhaps he always wanted to be prepared for a ball game. As described in the poem, once the children spotted him, they would gather around the monk who then paused his alms collection and engaged in a game or two.

The appeal of Ryokan’s calligraphy lies not just in the beauty of his lines, but rather in the manner how he expresses his carefree spirit by means of writing. Nihonga painter Yasuda Yukihiko, who provided the box inscription for the present scroll, was an avid collector of Ryokan’s works. According to Yukihiko, Ryokan’s calligraphy is “unaffected and of a completely plebeian, light-hearted nature. His warm human nature and inner wisdom reveals itself effortlessly through his art.” Poem is an outstanding work that in its rhythmicality and bustling sense of movement easily evokes the pleasure of a day playing outside. The unaffected ball play is more than just a moment of unrestrained amusement; in fact, it becomes a metaphor of Ryokan’s spiritual state of affirmation of life.

Ryokan (Zen priest, poet; 1758−1831)
Zen priest, poet and calligrapher of the mid- to late Edo period. Born in Echigo Province (now Niigata Prefecture), Ryokan trained as a monk at Koshoji temple in his home province, and later at Entsuji temple in Bitchu (now Okayama Prefecture). Leading an itinerant life for many decades, Ryokan counted as a something of an eccentric even for Zen standards, yet his contributions to waka (Japanese-style) poetry and calligraphy remains highly regarded.