Ashide Utagire - Utagire with feet

...In addition to the Chinese character 'heaven', the first volume also contains a passage in which the flow of water is expressed by drawing a long line in the cursive style of 'water', an example of a match between the picture and the meaning. An example of the use of ashide as a kind of pictograph in waka poetry is the 'Ashide Utakiri'. This is a fragment from the 'Kokin Wakashu' in which 'fu' is written to resemble the shape of a flying bird, but this has nothing to do with the meaning of the poem, and it is difficult to say for sure whether it is a type of writing style mentioned above....

*Some of the terminology explanations that refer to "Ashide Utakiri" are listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…漢字の例では〈天〉があるほかに流水の流れを〈水〉の草書体の線を長く引いて表現した個所が上巻にみとめられるが，これは絵と字義と一致した例である。和歌の中に葦手を一種の絵文字として用いた遺例に，葦手歌切がある。これは《古今和歌集》の断簡で〈ふ〉を飛ぶ鳥の形に擬して書いてあるが，歌意とは無関係で，前述の書体の一種か否か断定しがたい。…

※「葦手歌切」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報