artwork signature and title/description

[cosmic_violet]

My dad bought this carved wood plaque at a flea market and asked me to try to figure out what it says. I got as far as being able to tell it's Japanese, and then got stuck haha. I scoured through a list of Kanji characters trying to spot the characters in the signature, but I had no luck. I've put some pictures of the writing under the cut.

Comments

[rirakuma]

You might have more luck posting this in the Japanese community.

My guess for the description is
松　X　あ/お　や
あ　X　X　つ
X　あ/お　や
松　急　や

It's a complete guess though...

Matsushima

[luca_o]

In vertical lines, read...
松しまや
ああまつ
しまや
松島や

This is famous "haiku" by Matsuo Basho(松尾　芭蕉).

Matsushima ya,
Ah, Matsushima ya,
Matsuhsima ya.

To know about Matsushima, see Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsushima

Two characters in a square, read...
松嶋

It is also pronouced "matsushima", but famous Matsushima is almost always written as 松島.
This is a slight mistake by the carver, I guess.

Re: Matsushima

[cosmic_violet]

Thank you so much!! :D