“Hotei is trying to climb up his bag!”¹

 

Hotei was a favorite subject of Hakuin, yet the inscription on this work is unusual. As with most of Hakuin’s calligraphic inscriptions, the characters are treated almost as images and enhance the meaning of the accompanying illustration, which depicts Hotei struggling to crawl atop his iconic sack. The name “Hotei,” which opens the inscription, has been greatly elongated; it is composed of two characters, with the second character, “tei,” placed far beneath the character for “ho.” An alternate reading for “tei” is fukuro, which means “sack” or “bag.” In this manner, Hakuin cleverly toys with Hotei’s name, implying that his struggle to mount his bag is in some ways meaningless since, as his name makes clear, he is already atop the bag and that his location is not a matter of physical place but of one’s perception.

 

—Bradley Bailey