In late 2021, an art dealer in Osaka came across an unusual scroll.
It was old and tattered — its outer layer of protective green silk had started to fray — but the most intriguing feature was a narrow strip of paper, slightly foxed and yellowed by age, which was pasted next to the hanging rod. Its eight Chinese characters were still clearly legible. Two of them in particular must have caught the dealer’s eye: 芭 (ba) and 蕉 (sho). When he unfurled the piece, it revealed rows of shimmering calligraphy interspersed with paintings in a loose, almost naive style. By then, the dealer must have known what he was looking at, but he nonetheless decided to seek a second opinion. He contacted Hideyuki Okada, curation manager at the Fukuda Art Museum in Kyoto, and Shinichi Fujita, emeritus professor at Kansai University. He invited both for a chat.
They confirmed his hunch: It was the “Nozarashi Kiko” (“Journal of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton”), a travel manuscript produced by Japan’s most esteemed poet Matsuo Basho (1644-94) at the end of a nine-month journey that he completed in 1685. For half a century, the scroll’s whereabouts had been unknown — many feared it had been lost. Its rediscovery was a major stroke of good luck.