Draft:Keigo Mamba

Keigo Mamba
Born	萬羽 啓吾 (1957-02-04) February 4, 1957 Japan, Niigata Prefecture
Occupation	Antiques dealer
Academic work
Main interests	inkstone, Japanese calligraphy, painting, Ryōkan
Notable works	Ryōkan -- bunjin no sho 良寛 -- 文人の書, Akinono jō -- ryōkan zenji manyō tekiroku あきのの帖
Notable ideas	Ceremonial usage theory of sō-gana
Influenced	Matsuo Itami (伊丹, 末雄)

Mamba, Keigo (萬羽, 啓吾; 4 February 1957 -) is a Japanese antiques dealer and researcher of Ryōkan (a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk in 1758 - 1831), who has been the owner of an antiques shop, Mamba-ken (萬羽軒), in Kanda-Jinbōchō, Tokyo, Japan. Mamba is known for his connoisseurship in a wide range of East Asian arts, such as Chinese and Japanese calligraphy and paintings, Chinese inkstone, and Buddhist arts. Particularly, Mamba is a leading expert in Taiseido Suigan inkstone (Japanese: 大西洞水巌硯), the best-valued stone material for inkstone, and calligraphy of Ryōkan.

Overview

Mamba was born in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. Since 2002, he has been running an antique shop, Mamba-ken in Kanda-Jinbōchō (one of the world's largest book town), Tokyo. His main interests are in the so-called Four Treasures of the Study (Japanese: 文房四寶; the main four Chinese stationery used in a study: inkstone, inkstick, brush, and paper).

He is best known as a specialist in Duan inkstones (Japanese: 端渓硯), particularly Taiseido Suigan. Mamba visited China a couple of times in the 1980s and learned the stone quality of Taiseido Suigan, which re-started to be mined in the 1970s after more than a century. Despite the hardness of discerning inkstone made of Taiseido Suigan from counterfeits, Mamba has been highly evaluated for his discerning eye. Renowned intellectuals and artists too seem to visit Mamba-ken. For example, a Japanese writer, Seigo Matsuoka (Japanese: 松岡正剛), wrote about the shop on his blog.

Ryōkan

His contribution in the research field about Ryōkan is remarkable since not only Mamba is a connoisseur of Ryōkan's calligraphy who newly discovered Buddhist manuscripts written by Ryōkan, but also he suggests to regard Ryōkan as bunjin (Japanese: 文人 (日本)); the literati). Mamba wrote his first book in 2007 and discussed a new image of Ryōkan as a bunjin.

Even since the living days of Ryōkan, Ryōkan has been recognized as a sacred and familiar image who lived in honorable poverty solely relying on mendicancy, wrote beautiful poems, interacted with local ordinaries, and played with local children by bouncing a ball, in other words, Ryōkan is an object respected and adored. Mamba makes Ryōkan's objective image clear, not a conventional, excessively saintly image. According to Mamba, it is not appropriate to see Ryōkan from one-sided perspectives (e.g., a begging monk who protested the then gigantic temple organization and authority, calligrapher, poet, etc.). Ryōkan continued to learn the profound thought of Zen since his youth, never abandoned a Zen-monk life, but had a very human side. Ryōkan had a wife once for a half year at 18 years old and even a child who died young. Mamba considers such a point beginning from his examination of the calligraphic works of Ryōkan. A notable scholar of Man'yōshū, Matsuo Itami's (Japanese: 伊丹末雄) writings seem to influence on Mamba's work.

In 2012, Mamba coauthored a book titled Akinono jō -- ryōkan zenji manyō tekiroku あきのの帖: 良寛禅師萬葉摘録 [Akinono-jō: Ryōkan's Excerpts of Man'yōshū] with a Japanese scholer, Kazuomi Ikeda (Japanese: 池田和臣), in which they overturned the prevailing orthodoxy about Ryōkan's two manuscripts of poems; even though Takeuchi-version, the one formerly owned by Shunichi Takeuchi (Japanese: 竹内俊一), had been regarded as a copy (not authentic manuscript written by Ryōkan) of Yasuda-version, the another one formerly owned by Yukihiko Yasuda, the truth is opposite.

Birth and Development of Kana (Ceremonial Usage Theory of Sō-gana)

Mamba also suggests a new theory on the birth and development of kana characters: the "ceremonial usage theory of sō-gana (Japanese: 草仮名形式説)". That is, hiragana (a kind of kana character and also known as on'na-de) which had several ways to write for each syllable was unified into that one character for one syllable at some point (probably around 905 for an imperial ordinance of Emperor Daigo), and sō-gana (Japanese: 草仮名; another type of kana characters) was born in the mid 10th century and ceremonially used to write ancient waka (poetry) for a certain short period.

Books

Single-authored Books

Mamba, Keigo. Ryōkan -- bunjin no sho 良寛 -- 文人の書 [Ryōkan: Calligraphy of the literati]. Tokyo: Shintensha, 2007.

Co-authored Books

Ikeda, Kazuomi; Keigo Mamba. Akinono jō -- ryōkan zenji manyō tekiroku あきのの帖: 良寛禅師萬葉摘録 [Akinono-jō: Ryōkan's Excerpts of Man'yōshū]. Rokyo: Seikan-sha, 2012.