Poem on Plum Blossoms

The text inscribed on this album leaf is a poem on plum blossoms; the poem is inscribed in seven columns, the columns varying in placement, in numbers of characters, and thus in length. The text is written in a combination of Chinese characters, or "kanji", and native Japanese script, or "hiragana". Inscribed by Takabatake Shikibu (1785-1881), the poem is written in script that alternates between cursive, or running, script (Chinese, "xingshu") and draft script (Chinese, "caoshu"). Though not dated, this calligraphic work bears a signature of the artist in the lower right corner--i.e., the second column of text from the right is the artist's signature. The poem is inscribed on an album leaf of a type known in Japanese as a "shikishi", or poem card. At some point the "shikishi" album leaf was mounted as a hanging scroll, the form in which it appears today. In the present mounting, the album leaf appears just below the center of a long stretch of buff mounting paper, which is bordered top and bottom by a strip of white mounting silk with brocaded designs woven in gold; above and below the gold-on-white strips and along the sides of the buff paper is dark green mounting silk subtly embellished with a woven pattern; at the top and bottom of the scroll appear longer sections of plain, medium brown mounting silk, the slightly longer top section articulated with affixed (i.e., mounted in place) "futai" streamers.