The Manyoshu (Collection of a Myriad Leaves)

This volume of the Manyoshu, a classic compilation of Japanese poetry, predominantly in the tanka form and dating from the fourth through eighth centuries, comes from the set that belonged to Kisaburo Konoshima. His lifelong interest in poetry began at an early age, and after moving to New York City he devoted himself to composing tanka poems reflecting on his life experiences. A member of the Cho-on poetry society, based in Kamakura, Konoshima published his poems in Japan in 1970 as a collection he titled Hudson, after the river he could see from his apartment. Konoshima’s grandson David Kei Callner, who grew up in Europe and the United States before moving to Japan, where he has lived since the late 1970s, spent years translating the poems and published the English edition of Hudson in 2005. After his grandfather’s death, Callner was instrumental in arranging the donation of some fifty works from his father’s collection to the Johnson Museum. (“American Sojourns and the Collecting of Japanese Art,” curated by Ellen Avril and presented at the Johnson Museum June 25–December 18, 2016)