Japanese Collections

Have you ever wished you could read the Japanese calligraphy (kuzushiji) in museum woodblock prints or old Edo-period manuscripts? When it comes to archival sources and manuscripts, even expert Japanologists often feel the need to brush up on– if not start completely from ‘zero’–their Japanese paleography reading skills.

With this in mind, we’ve recently stepped up our holdings in Japanese paleography handbooks, including several nifty new acquisitions by Kobayashi Masahiro, an expert and scholar of historical documents (komonjo).

The image here, courtesy of the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, is a digital facsimile of Shojiki-mono (正直者) from Kitagawa Utamaro’s series Kyokun Oya no Megane (教訓親の目鑑).  It is one of several museum pieces featured in Kobayashi’s book Korenara yomeru! Kuzushiji, komonjo nyūmon (これなら読める!くずし字・古文書入門), which roughly translated is “If I Could Read That: An Introduction to Japanese kuzushiji and komonjo.” As the picture suggests, the book offers a variety of lesson as well as useful tips for learning how to decipher such Japanese texts often found in Edo-period woodblock prints.  Describing the moral virtue of being honest for Edo period young women, the body text of famous woodblock prints such this one are all the more legible thanks to Kobayashi’s insightful lessons.

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For additional titles on learning Japanese hentaigana, check out these recent additions: