Thousand Character Classic in Cursive Script

DULI XINGYI (DOKURYŪ SHŌEKI, 1596-1672)
Thousand Character Classic in Cursive Script
Two albums of eighty-four leaves each, ink on paper
Each leaf measures 26 x 21.2 cm. (10 ¹⁄₄ x 8 ³⁄₈ in.)
Inscribed and signed, with three seals of the artist
Dated wushen year (1668)
Each album with one collector’s seal of Robert van Gulik
NOTE: Robert van Gulik Reference no. 389.

Duli Xingyi (Dokuryū Shōeki) was a Chinese scholar and calligrapher who fled the Manchu conquest of his homeland and arrived in Nagasaki Japan in 1653. He took the name Duli Xingyi when he became a monk under Ingen, the Chinese founder of Mampukuji, the Obaku Zen temple near Kyoto. The Obaku sect was influential in the spread of contemporary Chinese culture in Japan during the Edo period (1600-1868). As a student of a famous physician Gong Yanxian (1522-1619), Duli help spread the use of cure of pox in Japan.

Acquire from a bookseller in Tokyo in 1949.