Fukuda Chiyo-ni 福田 千代尼 Kaga no Chiyo 加賀 千代女 - "The Dawn", Daimyō, Signatures and Seals, Haiku Poetry with Haiga Verses - 1730

Fukuda Chiyo-ni 福田 千代尼
Kaga no Chiyo 加賀 千代女
"Die Morgenröte" 夜明け"

Haiku poetry and painting with haiga verses
Original signatures
Kaga Province, around 1730-1750

+ 2 folded double sheets with painting
+ 3 sheets with painting
+ 1 folded double sheet with haiga verses and red seals

Unique piece on rice paper
HAND-COLORED

Size of double sheet: approx. 44.5 cm x 15 cm
Size of paired sheets with paintings: each 25 cm x 24.5 cm and 29 cm x 23 cm
Size of sheets with paintings: 25 cm x 16 cm and 24 cm x 8.5 cm and 11.5 cm x 8 cm

Kaga no Chiyojo (* 1703 Hakusan, Kaga Province; † 2 October 1775, Kaga Province) was a Japanese poetess and a Buddhist nun.

She is widely regarded as one of the greatest female poets of haiku (then still called hokku).
Among Chiyo’s most remarkable works are "The Dawn" (Die Morgenröte), "Pinning Up My Hair" and "Again, the Women".

As one of the few female haiku-poets in premodern Japanese literature, Chiyo-ni was an influential figure. Before her time, haiku by women were often dismissed and ignored. At the age of seven she began writing haiku, and by seventeen she was very popular all across Japan. Chiyo-ni continued writing throughout her life. Influenced by the famous poet Matsuo Bashō, but aspiring and independent with a unique voice, Chiyo-ni’s dedication not only paved the way for her career but also opened the path for other women to follow. Chiyo-ni is known as a “pioneer who played a role in promoting cultural exchange with Korea.”

She is perhaps best known for this haiku:

Dawn
the well-wrapped bucket,
I ask for water

Parents older than I
are now my children
the same cicadas

Listening,
even if you don’t listen, that’s okay... a nightingale

Today, dawn is a favorite flower of people in her hometown, because she left a number of poems about this flower behind. At Shokouji Temple in Hakusan, her personal belongings are on display.

Chiyo-ni was born in February 1703 in Matto in Kaga Province (today Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture) as the eldest daughter of a scroll-mounting craftsman. From a young age she was made familiar with art and poetry, and at seven began to write haiku. By seventeen she had become very popular in all of Japan for her poems.

Her poems, though mostly about nature, work toward a unity of nature with humankind. Her own life was that of a haikai poet who made her life and the world she lived in one with herself and led a simple, modest life. She was able to make connections by being attentive and by carefully studying and recording the unique things in her ordinary world.

It may be that Chiyo-ni lived with her aging parents after her husband’s death and cared for them, working in the family business assembling scrolls.

After the death of her parents, she adopted a couple to carry on the family business, and in 1754, at the age of fifty-two (according to East Asian reckoning), Chiyo-ni decided to become a Buddhist nun. "Not to renounce the world, but to teach her heart how to be the clear water that flows day and night." Chiyo-ni shaved her head and lived with other nuns in a temple, taking the Buddhist name Soen.

She continued writing and lived the rest of her simple but peaceful life in the manner of haikai.

In 1764 she was chosen to prepare the official gift for Maeda Shigemichi, the daimyo of her region, to the Korean delegation led by the civilian minister Jo Eom.

Chiyo-ni created and delivered 21 works of art based on her twenty-one haiku.

You are bidding on these originals haiku compositions with haiga painting and signatures.

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