Nantembō Tōjū 南天棒登洲 (1839 –1925)

Hearing Nothing, Seeing Nothing

Hanging scroll, ink on satin

Signature: »eighty-five year old Nantembō Tōjū« 
八十五翁南天棒登洲

Seals: 
1) »eighty-five year old Nantembō« 八十五翁南天棒 2) Hakugaikutsu 白崖窟, and 3) Tōjū 登洲1

Inscription: »Katsu! And for three days, hearing nothing« Katsu mikka jirō 喝三日耳聾2

Box inscription: »Nantembō ›Katsu mikka jorō‹ scroll with satin« 南天棒　喝三日耳聾　絖本竪幅

This powerful calligraphic scroll by the Zen monk Nantembō shows the aged artist at the height of his powers. At eighty-five, the monk still astonishes the viewer with his forceful strokes and his clear insight into Zen Buddhist texts and traditions.

In this scroll Nantembō quotes an early key text of the Zen monks, the Jingde chuandenglu (Japanese: Keitoku dentōroku) 『景徳伝燈録』, compiled in 1004. The biography of the monk Hyakujō Ekai 百丈懐海 (749 – 814) is described in this text, including how he repeatedly goes to his master, the great monk Basō Dōitsu 馬祖道一 (709 – 88), in order to receive guidance on his quest toward enlightenment. The meeting is recorded as follows:

When I again approached Master Basō, he gave out a great yell: »Katsu!« and I could not hear for three days, nor could my eyes see.

老僧昔再参馬祖被大師一喝、直得三日耳聾眼暗3

In other words, the yell »katsu!«—a word used to help bring monks to enlightenment—was said with such force that the monk was lost to the outer world for three days. That is, the word katsu brought enlightenment to the monk through the sheer force of its delivery and the overwhelmingly strong personality of the master monk.

Nantembō cleverly recreates this verbal explosion into a two-dimensional format by crashing his ink-loaded brush with such force on the satin that ink splashes all over the surface—and even beyond. Matthew Welch describes an eye-witness description of such creations: »Nantembō…heavily loading his oversized brush, slightly pinched the tip to temporarily stop the flow of ink out of the bristles, and then with great gusto hit the paper with the brush to begin the character.«4 Clearly the monk was simulating the verbal force of his distant predecessor and attempted to lead his viewers to enlightenment through a powerful calligraphic recreation of the word katsu.

Nantembō returned repeatedly to the word katsu; for example, a hanging scroll with a large single character dated to 1911 is in the collection of the Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin.5 However, the combination of the character with the above inscription from Jingde chuandenglu is rare, and the present example may be the only extant version. It is in any case a remarkable example of Nantembō’s striking visual interpretations of Zen Buddhist history through the medium of calligraphy.

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