Formerly owned by Yamada Toko, this work is titled Reminiscence of Ryokan and it features an assortment of seven types of calligraphy by the Zen priest Ryokan.
 
1. Man’yogana chart, 25 lines, sogana
This work features 25 lines filled with 227 kinds of sogana characters, ranging from the ‘a’ to the ‘ma’ sounds in the Japanese syllabary. This is an extremely valuable document for understanding the types of characters used by Ryokan.

2. Four waka poems, 3 lines for each poem, mixture of hiragana and sogana
These poems were all composed by Ryokan and gifted to Yamada Toko. Toko was the ninth head of the Yamada family of sake brewers. He was adept at both haikai poetry and painting, and he was a particularly good friend of Ryokan’s.

3. Segment of a choka poem, 12 lines, mixture of hiragana and sogana
This choka poem laments the death of Omori Kyuko, son of Omori Shiyo. Shiyo founded the private school Kyosen-juku, where Ryokan spent six years studying Chinese poetry.

4. Words written after an earthquake, 22 verses and 16 lines, shokai-sho (calligraphy written in small standard script)
This is a memorial to people who lost their lives in an earthquake that hit Sanjo city, Niigata Prefecture in 1828.

5. Verses by four Zen priests and a poem by Ryokan
Gatha verses by the Japanese Zen priest Ikkyu and the Chinese Zen priests Shenxiu, Huineng and Xuedou are written in shokai. These are followed by a poem by Ryokan. Shenxiu and Huineng were disciples of the fifth Chan (J. Zen) patriarch Hongren. The two priests famously competed for enlightenment by presenting verses to Hongren, with these verses also featuring here. Xuedou Chongxian’s verse is a stanza from the verse in Xuefeng’s Grain of Rice, part five of The Blue Cliff Record.

6. Seven-character octet, five-character octet and tanka poem
The seven-character octet expounds on the difficulty of reaching Zen enlightenment head on, while the five-character octet mentions a young libertine. These passages seemingly reflect Ryokan’s own thoughts as a man who abandoned his own home.

7. Two waka poems (one by Yamada Toko and one by Ryokan)
Toko and Ryokan chanted these poems together, with Ryokan was humorously linked here to a thin sardine.
 
An inscription (a seven-character quatrain) at the end of the scroll by Nakabayashi Gochiku (1827–1913) speaks of the complete harmony between man, poetry and calligraphy, and it says Ryokan is the only person since post-priest Saigyo (1118–1190) to exhaust all the impurities in his soul.

As mentioned above, this scroll features a mix of literary genres (Chinese poems and Japanese poetry like tanka and choka) and calligraphic styles (small, running and cursive script and kana (hiragana and man’yogana). As such, this one scroll essentially presents an overview of Ryokan’s grand perspective of art.

Ryokan (Zen priest, poet; 1758–1831)
Zen priest, poet, and calligrapher of the 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 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.