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<Little note on calligraphy>

From time to time, people wonder what they were born for, or what they should accomplish in this world, don’t we?

When I had that feeling, my conclusion was that I must repay my late calligraphy teacher, a great master, whom I met perhaps fatefully for his cordial teaching and love, as well as my late parents for allowing me to continue attending and practicing at his school for many years.  Furthermore, that coincides with my self-expression through the art of calligraphy.

Here, I would like to mention how I find the art intriguing, attractive, and even exciting, and how that relates to what my teacher passed along to me.

(1) Firstly, similar to painting and drawing, calligraphy is done on paper, something so thin, or rather, a world of two dimensions, with an effort to create something of a three-dimensional world.  My teacher even expressed this idea as “creating a universe on a piece of paper.”

For this purpose, you must be very careful about the color and amount of the ink, both being absorbed in a brush and after being put on paper, which can also be somewhat enjoyable work.

(2) Secondly, the art of calligraphy is basically monochrome.  And this reminds me of the words by the late Andy Warhol, a central figure of pop art: “The Colored world is ubiquitous, while the monochrome world cannot exist without conscious intention to create it.”  The sort of unnaturalness of only black and white and various tones and shades between them, contrarily, contributes successfully to expanding and developing people’s power of imagination.

And again, as with the previous point, great importance should be attached to being very careful as to the color and the amount of ink.

(3) Thirdly, although calligraphy is a kind of art, it always deals with characters that definitely are the most practical stuff that people use.  As a matter of fact, people use them for clerical work and even when they want to confess their feelings to those they love (if you call it “practical”, that is).

Having said that, in Japan, a traditional belief in the power of words has been around for a long time, that, roughly put, is spirits dwell in words and speech; accordingly, if you keep using positive language, things will look up, and the converse is also true.  In short, language will impact people’s lives.  It is quite easy to understand that deifying language like this will make characters into art materials.

Given this, it is pretty natural that calligraphy involves characters or letters with meanings and their aggregation, like poems and axioms.

You can choose your favorite passages by your favorite poet or writer, or you can write the whole thing as well, if you like, as material for your works.  Or, you can write only one letter that you are fond of.  Or maybe you could even choose some mottoes to energize yourself, as the results of your own works will surely please you when you display them near you.  You can, of course, gratify others by giving your works of your own making, that is, something very special.

(4) Lastly, please note that until only about a couple of decades ago, except for printed matters like books, magazines, and newspapers, in almost all situations, letters were written by people.  Hence, practicing calligraphy meant learning how to write neat letters.  Moreover, especially for young women, having the ability to write neat and easy-to-read letters was quite an advantage in society.

However, in this day and age, machines write neat and easy-to-read letters for us.  Accordingly, I believe that in the art of calligraphy, we should pursue creations that only humans can realize, full of distinct personality and emotion from each creator, with a sense of joy in life.

Here, I would like to mention as conclusion, what I always value in my own practice and advice to the Yushokai participants as well is “to try and create a universe on a piece of paper as an activity of self-expression with materials like my favorite letters, words or poems with my own hands and not using machines; to give pleasure to others and as well as myself by enjoying seeing the works in our lives”, which coincides my teacher’s ultimate goal, “pleasure of calligraphy in daily lives”.

Now, I would like to present small works below as examples that I created for this purpose.

“Graceful rain” and “Love”: these are word and letter which I love, that is, I like both their shapes and meanings.  I think it may be tough for machines to create something like these, not only in terms of appearance but also with deep tastes.  Additionally, I believe their small size will allow them to fit into the average rooms and hallways in typical Japanese houses nowadays.

I wonder what you thought about this article.  Would you like to create your own works to bring pleasure to yourself or someone you care about by practicing calligraphy from the basics?

What would you say to grinding an inkstick on an inkstone to prepare for the proper practice of calligraphy while enjoying the pleasant fragrance of the Indian ink, developing your ideas, and finally making your one and only creation?

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