@inproceedings{oai:kokubunken.repo.nii.ac.jp:00002655,
 author = {ブリッセ, クレール-碧子 and BRISSET, Claire-Akiko},
 book = {国際日本文学研究集会会議録, PROCEEDINGS OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JAPANESE LITERATURE},
 issue = {25},
 month = {Mar},
 note = {pdf, The meaning of the word ashide, which appears frequently in the documents from the 10th century, is not even now completely clear, but it is mainly regarded as a calligraphic style quite in vogue during the Heian period. It is usually divided in two kinds, the moji-e (that refers to writing characters which have been pictorialized into motives such as reeds, rocks or birds, for example), and the jion-e (which consists in actual pictural designs used as phonetic signs, such as wheels, jars or baskets). We can see even today many examples of these ashide in the second part of Heian period, mainly in calligraphic fragments (such as the Ashide uta-gire of the Tokugawa Museum), in underpaintings used for calligraphic purpose (like the Ashide shita-e-bon Wakan rôei-shû by Fujiwara no Koreyuki, of the Kyôto National Museum), and in paintings (such as the cover paintings, frontispieces and text margins of the 12th century decorated sutras like the Kunôji-kyô and the Heike nôkyô）． But all these conventionalized ashide sceneries seem to be used as mere decoration, with no specific meaning at all.
However, two examples of ashide picture puzzle with hidden poems remains today. The first one, that is, the famous frontispiece painting of the Yakusôyu-bon of the Kunôji-kyô (Mutô family's collection), has been deciphered by Pr. Shirahata Yoshi in the 1940s, and we can consider today her interpretation to be quite convincing. The second one, fairly less widely-known that the former, is a copy of the Mososuke-shû kept in the Reizei family's collection. The Motosuke-shû is the personal poetic anthology of Kiyohara no Motosuke, both known as one of the Nashitsubo group and as Sei Shônagon's father, and, from an inscription located at the end of the booklet, we know it was copied in 1175 by Bômon no tsubone, a daughter of Fjiwara no Shunzei. The title is inscribed on the cover in big and thick characters, very close to Teika's own calligraphic style. Upon the two sides of the cover are depicted autumnal marshy landscapes, made up with ashide designs such as flying wild goose, rocks, reeds, cranes, wheels or aquatic birds. Even considering these ashide to allude to a specific text, it would be very difficult to decipher the pictures, but thanks to an explanation added afterwards to the booklet by Reizei Tamehisa (1686-1741), we know that this ashide picture puzzle is the pictorialization of a Kokin waka-shû poem (Autumn first section): Nakiwataru kari no namida ya ochitsuramu mono-omohu yado no hagi no uhe no tsuyu.
We would like to present this riddle of the Reizei family's Motosuke-shû with special attention to questions such as how to analyse the ashide in the pictures, is there any relationship between the Kokin-shû poem and Motosuke-shû’s own content, and if there is any relationship between the two, what kind of relationship could it be?},
 pages = {89--101},
 publisher = {国文学研究資料館},
 title = {研究発表　葦手絵と和歌と　―冷泉家時雨亭文庫の『元輔集』をめぐって―},
 year = {2002},
 yomi = {ブリッセ, クレール-碧子}
}