In his youth, Kanō Tessai was a Buddhist monk at a Zen temple, where he learned painting and calligraphy. He left monastic life in the late 1860s to pursue research on ancient Chinese and Japanese sculpture techniques. In 1887, he was appointed professor of sculpture at the newly founded Tokyo School of Fine Arts. In the final years of his life, he focused on producing sculptures in wood and bronze, as well as netsuke 根付 and other pieces using the dry lacquer technique.

This semi-cursive calligraphy, with energetic and angular strokes, was likely created during Tessai’s time at the Buddhist temple. The phrase he transcribes may have been taken from one of the verses in the Chinese poem, Ten Poems Offered for Eternal Life on a Spring Day 春日奉獻聖壽無疆詞十首, composed by Yang Juyuan 楊巨源 during the Tang dynasty 唐.