The Three Mornings

Yosa Buson

Edo ・18th

Kyoto National Museum

A portrait depicts an elderly man with a white beard and hair, wearing a dark robe. Calligraphy fills the upper portion of the scroll. The "three mornings" refers to the first morning of the year, the first morning of the first month, and the morning of New Year's day. As is indicated in the inscription by Yosa Buson (1716-83) at the top of the scroll, it was the first haiga ("poetry painting") made on a New Year's day in his declining years. Although it is said that the elderly man depicted in the scroll is a person who appeared to Buson in a dream, we might also assume that it is a portrait of Buson himself.