YouTube video “water” “stream”

[wpvideo LQXiV9A9]

I posted a new video on my YouTube channel that I newly set up.

Check this and enjoy my calligraphy!

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For, like the last one, this one shows how letters are being born out of ink, a brush, paper and an artist’s arm.

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This brilliant device will certainly show you the essence of calligraphy.

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This phrase is made up of two characters “water” and “stream”.

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A very important, dear friend of mine from Poznań, Poland praised the movement of my arm likening it to something flowing on the stream of water right after my calligraphy performance in the opening of the exhibition, TRZY RZEKI 2017 KYOTO POZNAN https://wp.me/P2EZhA-2dn.

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She said the movement of my arm was so smooth and elegant that it looked like something quietly flowing on a stream of water, however, I did not know exactly how I could respond to her comment and to my regret, I just mumbled some meaningless words in my mouth.

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After returning to Kyoto, I reported this little story to my present calligraphy teacher, and she what said was “You should have just said ‘Thank you very much’, because comparing your arm movement to water streams or something dancing in the air is THE compliments of highest grade!”

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Flying dragon

The photo shows one corner of the exhibition, TRZY RZEKI 2017 KYOTO POZNAN, held in Poznań, Poland in November 2017.

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Because both my first calligraphy teacher, the late Mr. Akiyama Kodo (秋山公道) and my mother were born in the year of the dragon, one of the twelve old Chinese zodiac signs, the letter dragon (龍) is my favorite.  Here I added another letter “flying” (飛) to the letter “dragon”.

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Looking back at the event, now I think I may have been turning to those two people closest to me at the unconscious level, trying to win their support for the success of this exhibition, a very important occasion in my career as a calligrapher.

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Since then, I have been more than grateful for having opportunities to perform calligraphy demonstration a couple of times while I stayed in the city of Poznań.

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Refreshing autumn breeze

It is a passage from a poem of ancient China that expresses the scene of the autumn found everywhere and a cool, pleasant breeze is blowing all around.

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And the line goes on to say it is just like the moment of your obtaining enlightenment or spiritual transcendence.

 

That is, just like the clear fall sky, your future prospect on life will take shape at a breath.

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And here again, I chose the letter, autumn, in the vertically reversed form.

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YouTube channel

I added a new video on my YouTube channel that I newly set up.

Check this and enjoy my calligraphy!

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For, this one shows how letters are being born out of ink, a brush, paper and an artist’s arm.

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This brilliant device will certainly show you the essence of calligraphy.

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Here is a brief passage from an ancient Chinese poem that expresses a woman’s beauty.

“When smiling, she is a flower close to your eyes.”

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Truth

What is truth?

Truth is what?

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The photo shows “Truth” by my first calligraphy teacher, the late Mr. Akiyama Kodo (秋山公道) who was a distinguished calligrapher.

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I wonder what he intended to express.

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I have been wondering whether people’s speech exactly reflect their minds or the opposite.

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Come to think of it, this “wondering” of mine is not something new at all.

I have been wondering in this way as long as I remember.

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Degree of freedom of Chinese characters

This is a quite well-known haiku by Basho (松尾芭蕉), one of the most popular haiku poets in early Edo period in Japan.

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Apparently, my most important friend as to my career as a calligrapher likes it, because he quoted it in his recent message to me.

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However, my biggest interest and what I wanted to show the readers here is the structure of the Chinese character for “autumn”.

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The letter has two parts, in other words it can be vertically divided into two parts.  And we usually write it just the opposite way from how I did here.  However, what did here is never a mistake.

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In short, when it comes to writing some Chinese characters, it doesn’t matter which way you put the two parts, that is, it isn’t very strictly defined which part should be right and which one should be put left side.

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To sum up, concerning how Chinese characters should be written, there is much wider latitude than people would usually expect.

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On this road/

No one will follow me/

In the autumn evening/

 

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Something feminine

This is another piece exhibited at the third exhibition of Yushokai held in July, 2015, sort of a medley of my works on thin strips of paper called tanzaku with haiku and tanka as motifs.

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Maybe I just wanted to look like a highly sophisticated women to do something like this at that time.

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To forget both

I found this from an anthology of Zen philosophy phrases.

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“To surmount the dualistic thinking pattern that all of us tend to fall into.”

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“Life or death”  “To do or not to do”  “Yes or no”  “Good or bad”  “Joy or sorrow” …

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And the phrase recommends us to try to enjoy being sort of “indefinite”.

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However, I just wonder if that is possible at all.  For, there are so many things to worry about in my life.

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