Teika: The Stylistic Legacy of A Master Calligrapher exhibition catalog (1987)

Teika: The Stylistic Legacy of A Master Calligrapher. Tokyo: The Gotoh Museum, 1987. Softcover. 256 pages. Japanese Language. Very good. Minor wear and chipping to covers. Catalog and brochure published to accompany the Gotoh Museum exhibition Teika: The Stylistic Legacy of A Master Calligrapher on view from February 21st-March 29th, 1987. Copiously illustrated. A scarce and beautiful book on a Japanese master calligrapher. Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) was born into an illustrious lineage of poets just as Japan’s ancien régime was ceding authority to a new political order dominated by military power. Overcoming personal and political setbacks, Teika and his allies championed a new style of poetry that managed to innovate conceptually and linguistically within the narrow confines of the waka tradition and the limits of its thirty-one syllable form. Backed by powerful patrons, Teika emerged finally as the supreme arbiter of poetry in his time, serving as co-compiler of the eighth imperial anthology of waka, Shin Kokinshū (ca. 1210) and as solo compiler of the ninth.