Medieval letters told tales of intrigue, war, love, and loss. They also straddled the line between mundanity and waste, on the one hand, and intimacy and embodied trace, on the other. Handwritten letters exceeded their semantic content, and by attending to their object biographies, we can recover their material stories. The narratives that emerge when we explore the visuality and materiality of reused letters for sutra copying (shōsokukyō) provide insights into a variety of stories about recipients, makers, and making practices. How can the particular methods and materials employed in this poignant transformation of missive into memorial reveal differing treatments and conceptions of the dead’s life and possessions? From the collaged, dyed, and recycled letters that mourners cloaked with scripture, these memorial objects – brimming with meaningful materiality and visual complexity– disclose vivid stories of history’s famous figures and the nameless and forgotten, alike.

Reischauer Institute Japan Forum co-sponsored by the East Asian Art Program, Harvard University