Sometimes, when I look at a painting or hold an object in my hands, I fall into a dreamlike state. I dream of long-ago events, faraway...

In reply to a telegram the Iemoto dips his brush in ink and writes this beautiful, well-spaced, but humble letter about manners, money,...

In Japan, when prized ceramics, especially those associated with chanoyu (the tea ceremony), were broken or damaged, they would be mended...

This letter is about fish and poetry, about gratitude and sorrow. Ishikawa Jozan was a prominent Samurai recluse, garden designer, and...

Karsumaru Mitsuhiro was a distinguished poet and a major figure in the inner circles of Emperor Go-Mizunoo. Karasumaru Mitsuhiro,...

Kodojin - the Old Taoist - was both a poet and a painter. And he is remembered as being one of the last in a long line of literati...

An ambiguous tea bowl. It is monumental and in the same time it is shy, reclusive, and fragile. Rengetsu delicately finger-pinched the...

Takuan Soho was the prototypical early Edo monk scholar with a sharp, witty, and untamed spirit. Dressed in a monk’s robe he pursued...

No doubt that Shibata Zeshin was the most prominent lacquer artist of the nineteenth century. And Ikeda Taishin (1825–1903) was his most...