“Although its scent still lingers on
the form of a flower has scattered away
For whom will the glory
of this world remain unchanged?
Arriving today at the yonder side
of the deep mountains of evanescent existence
We shall never allow ourselves to drift away
intoxicated, in the world of shallow dreams.”1
The Iroha is a pangrammatic poem, using every syllable of the Japanese alphabet exactly once. In existence since the Heian period (794–1185), the poem is thought to be an adaptation of a Buddhist sutra, though it is now commonly used in Japan for sequential ordering, akin to alphabetical order in English. This imposing pair of screens allowed Tesshū to show his dynamism and calligraphic mastery while also engaging in a long-standing Buddhist tradition.
—Bradley Bailey