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Scroll translation

MayaSBL

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25 Apr 2020
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I received a scroll from a friend with calligraphy on it. Can someone help me translate it?

WhatsApp Image 2020-04-23 at 21.30.00.jpeg
 
隂崖百草枯蘭蕙多生意君子居險夷
乃與恒人异壬午年清雨兰寫

As Majestic-san wrote, the right column and the first 5 characters in the left column are a Chinese poem 題画蘭 "Orchid".

隂崖百草枯、蘭蕙多生意。君子居險夷、乃與恒人异。
Many plants wither on a shady cliff, but orchid naturally grow richly.
Whether in a severe or safe place, gentlemen are different from ordinary people.


The last 7 characters show that your picture of orchid was drawn on a rainy day (probably in autumn) in 2002.
 
Thank you for translating it. My friend was sure it was Japanese. How can I tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese calligraphy when there are no hiragana/katakana characters?
 
It can be difficult to tell the difference unless you speak Japanese or Chinese. The poem could be a Chinese classical poem written by a Japanese person. The poem could by a Japanese poem written in Chinese style (kanbun). For this poem, I took one of the phrases and put it into a search engine, and that led me to discover the poem and the poet. But until I did that I wasn't completely sure what or where this came from. Well, I had an idea that it isn't Japanese because some of the kanji used are not found in Japanese - but even still I wasn't 100% sure.
 
It's not uncommon to write a classical Chinese poem in a Japanese scroll, so "a real Chinese poem is used there" doesn't prove that it's a Chinese scroll. As for your scroll, as Majestic-san mentioned, 兰 is a simplified Chinese character mostly used in Mainland China or Singapore, and never used in Japanese. Similarly, 异 is used as an alternative of 異 there, but this usage is found only in modern simplified Chinese. 异 is also used in Japanese, but it can't mean 異.
 
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