Category: Calligraphy

This month’s calligraphy is a saying by a Chinese poet, who as a child had a dream of a flower emerging from the tip of a brush.  This turned out to be a prophecy of his future greatness.

It is curious how many important people had their greatest ideas come to them when they were not consciously thinking (Newton’s apple story is one famous example.) I think this is a perfect reason (besides all the health benefits) for getting more sleep. This is my excuse reason for making this post so short.

Last calligraphy lesson was dedicated to practice signing our work before sending to to japan for grading. The signature contains the name of the group, my current rank (using a ranking system of dan, similar to that of martial arts) and my name in katakana.

Writing with a small brush feels different from the usual shodo practice. Although not a part of the test, the appearance and the style of the signature has an influence on the judges decision in a similar way that a way of wearing one’s bogu, holding the shinai, bowing, entering and leaving the dojo are all factors in the outcome of kendo grading. Similar to kendo, the feedback from the judges of a shodo grading is very limited, with some rare exceptions, when brief comments on the specific entries would be printed in a monthly booklet. It would be interesting to have a glimpse of what goes on in the judges’ mind as they examine my work…

In the mean time, covering pages with my name for couple of hours had a mixed feeling of being back in the first grade and that of doing suburi before kendo practice.

In shodo (Japanese calligraphy), one of the most difficult aspects is the balance between the individual characters (kanji) and the overall image, which often contains many kanji. In the image above, the orange marks, made by my teacher, point out the individual kanji and, in the case of “water” in the lower left, the elements of the kanji.

While drawing the details of each kanji, which has to be done in a particular order, I have to keep in mind the overall balance of the final image. If a particular brushstroke is out of place or proportion, the brushstrokes that follow will be out of balance. At the same, it is important not to become too concerned about the outcome and instead concentrate on what is being drawn at any given moment.

This balance between the details and the whole is one of the parallels between shodo and kendo. It also translates to practically any other activity, such as teaching, studying and photography.

Semi-formal style of Japanese calligraphy, gyo-sho, is my favourite among the three scripts we practice. The other two styles are kai-sho (formal) and so-sho (informal). I tired to think why I prefer gyo-sho, and I think it is because of the balance between being constrained by the rules (the characters have to be readable) and the freedom to improvise the details. It conveys both proficiency and creative ability.

This week, I had another chance to compare my current writing (the image above) with that of three years ago. Writing gyo-sho definitely felt more comfortable than diving into the formal kai-sho style a week ago after a long break in practice. The feeling is very similar to kendo, where at the beginning of a practice session, muscles warm up, and the brain lets go a little bit of control, allowing the body to act spontaneously, at least sometimes, which manifests in small, spontaneous details of the techniques (waza). Of course, the parallels between painting, calligraphy and martial are well known and have been explored by many authors and artists, such as Dave Lowry in “Sword and Brush.”

Quite appropriately, the theme of this month’s calligraphy is welcoming of Spring. I think that striving for balance between structure and spontaneity, between following the rules and breaking them, is the positive change that is needed in all aspects of life, which is too often over-structured because of external demands and self-imposed expectations.

After a nearly nine-month break, my wife and I are back to practicing shodo (Japanese calligraphy). I wanted to post my writing attempts on Flickr, and found, to my surprise, that when I started doing the same thing three year ago, my first post was of exactly the same writing (the image below is from three years ago.) It reads “しゅんらいききむかう.” As with many of the sayings typically used in calligraphy, the exact translation is a bit elusive (and somewhat missing the point),  but “Welcome spring” is close enough. This is kaisho – formal script.

When I wrote this three years ago, it was also a re-start of our photo practice. Our daughter was just a newborn, and we would bring her to our teacher’s house. She would sleep peacefully (at least, this is how I remember it now) in her car seat, while my wife and I would write and then eat incredibly delicious dinners cooked by our sensei’s wife. Having a child with us was a major change in dynamics of our practice from the time when there were just two of us. I guess, this is just another illustration that shodo, like kendo, is a mirror of of the entire life.

Our daughter is not a little bundle laying in a car seat beside the chair anymore. She is a person, who wants to draw, and write, and play, and watch TV, and read, and eat, and drink, and talk. The change of dynamics and pace seems to be continuous. Perhaps, embracing it is the point of practice.

These days, our daughter likes to do everything together with us. I know that this will pass, as the need to assert her independence will take over, but I wonder if one day we would have a chance to write calligraphy side-by-side.