Poem: Modified Excerpt from Response to Mr. Xu Wurui’s “Whistles on the Horse” by Li Yi (748–829)

Yi Mae Kye’s father had been seized during the Japanese military campaigns waged across the Korean Peninsula between 1592 and 1598 and brought to Japan where he served as a teacher to a provincial warlord family. Yet although Yi Mae Key spent years of relative isolation from the mainstream cultural pursuits found in Japan’s main cities, he became adept at painting and calligraphy, perhaps through his father’s tutelage. He also knew of the classic Chinese poets, including Li Yi (748–829), whom he quotes in this calligraphy scroll. The forms of the seven Chinese characters on this work recalls stylistic innovations introduced by the Korean ruler King Seonjo (1552–1608) that were popularized by scholars and government officials in attendance at the royal court in Seoul. The ancient Chinese poetic inscription Yi Mae Kye has transcribed ruefully ponders old age and the solace of wine: “Deep in my cups, looking for lost spring times.” A century after the poem sheet’s creation, one of the foremost Edo-period painters active in the ancient Japanese capital city of Kyoto, Maruyama Okyo, carefully mounted it as a hanging scroll featuring a monochrome ink pictorial border. The upward arching branches of a wild plum tree in bloom of the mounting add a visual riposte to the bittersweet sentiment of the calligraphic text: In the Confucian culture of East Asia in which this scroll was produced, the blooming prunus is the harbinger of the end of winter.