Otagaki rengetsu biography of barack

  • Rengetsu was adopted as an infant, widowed twice, and had several children who died very young.
  • A calligrapher, poet, and ceramic artist, she blended these three art forms to create a unique body of work in clay and on paper that is at once painfully.
  • Rengetsu was a famed calligrapher, poet and potter.

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    7 September 2015

    Japan, Poetry

    On Friday 4 September we were delighted to host a lecture by Prof. Sarah Moate (Komazawa University), who spoke on “The Moon of the Fields: the Calligraphy and Poetry of the Japanese Jōdo-shū nun Ōtagaki Rengetsu.” We were especially honoured to host Prof. Moate’s lecture due to the fact she is the President of the Asiatic Society of Japan.

    Prof. Moate’s lecture provided a fascinating account of the life and work of Ōtagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875), who is known as “Lotus Moon” in English. Rengetsu was a famed calligrapher, poet and potter. Prof. Moate provided an introduction to Rengetsu’s early life, which was marked by tragedy and loss; she became a nun in her early thirties having endured the untimely deaths of two husbands and all of her young children. Rengetsu’s art and poetry reflected not just her personal experience of life but also her response to a time of great social change within Japanese society. Themes of suffering, joy, and natu

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    Who Was Otagaki Rengetsu?

    Her pottery, inscribed with her poems, has a down-to-earth appeal coupled with a sublime beauty. Her elegant calligraphy, done in the curvaceous women’s script known as hiragana—more emotionally accessible than classical Chinese characters—touches us through its simplicity. But it is Rengetsu herself, her vulnerability and ability to express her enlightenment in very human terms, that has kept people connected to her art, and her dharma, for more than one hundred and fifty years.

    Rengetsu was adopted as an infant, widowed twice, and had several children who died very young. Her personal life was a relentless teaching on impermanence, and her decision to become ordained as a Buddhist nun was a heartfelt effort to make sense of this impermanent life. After she was ordained, she settled into a hermitage on the grounds of her adoptive father’s temple. However, he died nine years later, which resulted in her being evicted. Being forced to leave her hermitage

  • otagaki rengetsu biography of barack

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    The following ord is from the website of the
    Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens.

    Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875)  was born in the spring of 1791, and was like the secret daughter of a geisha and Todou Yoshikiyo, ledare retainer of the Iga-Ueno fief. She was soon adopted into the samurai-class family of Otagaki Tsune’emon and his wife Nawa, and was given the name Nobu. She spent her early childhood on the grounds of Chion-in, head temple of the Jodo sect of Buddhism, where she began training in literature, poetry and martial arts. At age eight, she was sent to serve as a lady-in-waiting at Kameoka castle outside of Kyoto. There she spent nearly a decade studying calligraphy, dancing, flower arranging and tea ceremony – all the appropriate cultural adornments of the refined, yet narrow, world of the upper class elite.

    Around the age of 33, hjärtekrossad and in a seemingly endless cycle of anställda tragedy and changing fortunes (as a result of the lo