Toko Shinoda: Love Poetry

About the Exhibition

From around the time she began studying calligraphy Toko Shinoda became interested in the Japanese classical arts such as poetry as found in the Man’yoshu and Kokinshu anthologies of waka verse, and noh. Unlike the Shin Kokin wakashu with its high level of aesthetic as well as technical refinement, the language of the Man’yoshu pulses with the rhythms that well forth from the heart and turns sounds transmitted to the ear into writing. Musing upon the times when the “Man’yo” poetry was written, Toko felt within her its inspiration for universal forms of beauty.
The Man’yoshu, Japan’s oldest anthology of poetry, contains numerous poems about love. The passions of love have not changed since time immemorial, and it has been depicted in all manner of arts. The present exhibition introduces love poems from Toko Shinoda’s Man’yo hyakushu collection, works of calligraphy in kana syllabary of one hundred selected poems from the Man’yoshu. Enjoy the freewheeling brushwork with which she expresses the sometimes sweet and indulgent, often sad and unrequited emotions of love.