Spirit of the Inkstone

sue-ZOO-ree no tah-mah-SHEE

📖 Detailed Description

An interpretation based on Sekien’s illustration and accompanying text. The Akamagaseki stone inkstone is famed as a choice scholar’s tool and is linked to memories of the Heike clan’s fall. When one immerses oneself in reading or copying texts, the inkstone’s surface opens like a seashore, upon which minute warriors appear to wage battle. This likens the inkstone to a “sea,” where the pooled ink becomes an ocean that bears up the echoes of history, a gesture of literati imagination. Later yokai commentaries sometimes add that using this inkstone sharpens brushwork, or that wave-sounds and murmurings can be heard, yet the core lies in Sekien’s note and the vision, seen in Xu Xuan–style tales, of tiny soldier hosts upon a desk implement. As a tsukumogami, a long-used inkstone accrues numinous power and, mediating between its owner’s reading life and the land’s memory, reveals scenes of the past.