Wang Xizhi, a famous calligrapher in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, was called a calligraphy saint by later generations. His most famous work is Preface to Lanting Collection, which plays an extremely important role in calligraphy. And he left few original works.
The only surviving original now lives in Japan. This script was written in 356 AD, because the tombs of Wang Xizhi's ancestors were destroyed when the northern minorities invaded the south. It is important for people to know that the graves of ancestors represent the rise and fall of a family.
On the one hand, Wang Xizhi is angry, on the other hand, he is heartbroken. So I took a pen and wrote a funeral note. "Funeral notes" are something similar to handwriting. All along, Wang Xizhi will write and draw casually when he is free. And this became Wang Xizhi's masterpiece. The total content of Mourning Zhi is 62 words, which fully describes Wang Xizhi's painful state of mind at that time.
There are different opinions about how this work flowed into Japan, and the academic circles have not formed a unified view. First, it flowed into Japan during the reign of Tang Dezong in the Tang Dynasty. Another story was handed down when Jian Zhen and the monk of the Tang Dynasty traveled eastward to Japan.
But there is no denying the literary and artistic value of this work. His brushwork is vivid, his writing is vigorous and powerful, and he combines the essence of all kinds of calligraphy, which is natural and gives people a unique aesthetic feeling. It's amazing that such exquisite works are still in Japan.