Enso
Mounting: 65 5/8 × 12 3/16 in. (166.7 × 31 cm)
This composition, which features a cursive vertical inscriptive in Japanese script below an ensō circle—denoting the paradoxical Zen Buddhist concept of Everything and Nothing—was brushed by a Buddhist layman who was named Nagata Sakichi. He was also known as "Buddha Sakichi" because of his good works: building roads and erecting signposts, commissioning images of the Buddha, and feeding the poor. This helps to explain the unusual secular origins of such an iconic Zen writing within 18th-century Edo Japanese society.
The calligraphic inscription reads: "In the cloudless sky / a single moon / illumines places of danger / Keeping us from losing our way / in this floating world of harm and pain." This is not a standard Zen aphorism associated with ensō imagery but a more personal reflection by "Buddha Sakichi" on the illusory transience and difficulty of life’s path.
Blunt and unselfconscious in its execution, the colophon’s brushwork—much like its message—distinguishes this example of Zen-inspired calligraphy. According to traditional Buddhist connoisseurship, Sakichi would have been considered at the height of his artistic and spiritual powers when he executed this calligraphy at the venerable age of eighty-seven.
