Title given to the Tenjin god

A title given to a deified spirit of Sugawara Michizane (845-903) is written on the scroll. Michizane was a statesman as well as a scholar in the early Heian period. He was relegated from the Imperial Palace in Kyoto to Dazaifu in Kyushu region by a false charge. After his death, he was deified as a god of scholarship “Tenjin.”
This work is signed and sealed by Kano Tanyu (1602-74) who was the official painter of the Tokugawa shogunate. He expressed this calligraphy in a way free of formality. The last letter connects to the branch of a plum tree. This comes from Michizane’s poem of parting from the beloved plum tree in his garden in Kyoto.