Tag Archive | Shodo

Shodo 書道 versus Shuji 習字

Sep29

Here is a link to a recent demonstration from the virtual 2020 Greater Kansas City Japanese Festival. In this video from 2018, Aikido master KINOSHITA Ryoichi-sensei demonstrates writing a kanji character while being restrained by some of his assistants. The character Agatsu 吾勝 means “victory over oneself” and is part of a larger Yojijukugo (four kanji proverb) that states 正勝吾勝 masakatsu agatsu, “True Victory is Victory over Oneself”. He is using sosho (cursive) script in this example.

The point Kinoshita-sensei is trying to convey here is regarding the transfer of energy from the body to the paper. One reason many martial artists chose to study shodo is because while the medium is completely different, the basic tenets can be applied to either art form. It is interesting in that, towards the end, Kinoshita-sensei differentiates between shodo and shuji. Shodo is a practice, shuji is calligraphy. Shodo is the action, shuji the result.

Watch carefully as Kinoshita-sensei brushes his kanji. He makes a point in the beginning about not using muscle, because force will just tear the paper. Note the position of his hand, and how when he brushes, his entire center moves: not just the hand, not just the arm, but his body.

It seems a simple concept, but in practice it can be quite challenging. Shodo not only takes focus, but precision and what I can only describe as “flow”. While it is highly unlikely in real life that burly men will somehow try to prevent you from brushing a character, the idea that Kinoshita-sensei is trying to convey here is that your energy needs to transfer to the writing, through your breath, through your body movement, through the proper alignment of the brush.

The Virtual 2020 Greater Kansas City Japanese Festival has a number of interesting videos regarding Japanese culture. You can find their page here. As the Festival is usually held as a fundraiser, if you enjoy the videos, please consider making a small donation so that they can continue their work in bringing Japanese culture to the Kansas City Area:

Virtual Festival Home

Shodo Practice Doku Sho Shu Kan 読書週間

Mar14

1_doku_sho_shu_kan

So in this time of quarantine, since the event I wanted to attend today was cancelled, and since I am self-isolating for a while due to recent travel (just got home Tuesday from San Antonio), I figured it was high time to get back to my shodo practice, which I have shamefully neglected in the past few months since my father’s passing. To be honest, I haven’t had much free time.

But the brush has been calling me and today I took a few hours to devote to practice. While I was doing that, I thought I would share a few pictures of some of the equipment I find useful, and how I do my practice. I apologize for no video, but I have neither the technology or expertise in that area to make one.

1_shodo_case

So this is a useful thing–a briefcase with basic shodo supplies. You can find them sometimes on Amazon or Ebay. Prices vary widely, so shop around.

3_shodo_case_inside_back

When you open it up, you can see there’s space to store a shitajiki (felt that you lay down under the paper) and some extra paper. There’s also a small bottle of ink.

2_shodo_case_inside_center

Opening the smaller area, you can see a couple of bunshin (paperweights), an ink stick, a chopstick holder that I use to balance the brushes on when not using them, a little bottle that holds excess ink, and a stone suzuri (inkstone). The set actually comes with a plastic one, but I prefer to use stone when grinding ink. The plastic suzuri are perfectly acceptable. Not included in the picture is a hanko (personal seal) as I haven’t carved mine yet, or the red paste used for the seal.

4_old_shodo_case

Here is another example of a shodo travel case. This is an old one, probably from the 1950’s-1960’s. I think it was $10 on Ebay when I got it. They come up from time to time and sometimes they can be a bargain.

5_old_shodo_case_inside

Here it is opened up. This one does have the paste (it’s in that little round black container that is barely visible) and a hanko (not mine, but I can recarve it). The case is too narrow to hold standard paper or shitajiki but is small and easy to carry, plus useful to set up in a small space.

6_old_hanko

Here is the hanko, a personal seal. For SCA-purposes, this is smaller than the inkan (seals) seen on most medieval artwork. These smaller seals came into popularity during the Edo period and are still in use today.

7_usual_brush_holder

This is what I usually carry my brushes in. It’s a simple bamboo roll, similar to what is used to roll sushi rolls.

8_usual_brush_holder_inside

And some brushes. The white-topped brushes are ones I use with “water paper” for practice, although I’ve moved away from that as the water tends to dry too fast when you are brushing more complex kanji. Good tool for beginners, though.

9_big_brush_holder

10_big_brush_holder_inside

Here’s a bigger version. It holds more brushes and of different sizes. I don’t encourage keeping the caps on brushes–the brushes with caps are extra ones I have on hand if I need to teach. I think I found this one on Amazon as part of a sumi-e set?

11_todays_practice_doku_sho_shu_kan

And here’s today’s practice Yojijukugo (proverb). The kanji say “dokusho shukan” meaning “Reading Week”, which is usually TWO weeks in late autumn October 27th to November 9th. This article here explains a little about the practice. While this is the wrong time of year, I think the COVID-19 quarantine gives us all a chance to catch up on our reading, so that’s why I chose this proverb.

12_the_usual_set-up

Here is my usual set up. Horribly modern, but the plastic protects my working table. I keep my example on the left, where I can easily refer to it, paper towards the top (well away from the ink), and ink and brushes to the right. One of the bunshin paperweights is at the top of the paper. I usually use my free hand to hold down the bottom of the paper, as it gives me more flexibility than a second bunshin would.

13_dipping_the_brush

Loading the brush with ink. I was eager to just get brushing today, so I didn’t grind my ink this time. I explain about that in a later post.

14_holding_the_brush

The brush is held vertically and not too firm a hold. I try to imagine holding an egg against the brush and that gets my hand in the correct position. However, as I am used to writing with a pen at an angle, I do have to constantly be aware of the brush and make sure I don’t lean it over. The wrist is kept stable–I use my entire arm for brushing. That requires maintaining a good posture, leaning slightly forward.

No picture here of the posture. If you sit seiza (on your knees), the posture comes naturally, but my ancient arthritic knees are not up to the task. I use a chair and sit a bit forward, with my legs tucked under a bit.

15_ichi

I always start with the character ichi (“One”) and usually do a page or two of that same character. It is not a simple straight line, but a slight curve. It’s also a good way to get into focus.

16_warm_up_sheets

Some of my warm-up sheets. I use either phonebook paper or newspaper for warm-ups and honestly, for a lot of the practice. It’s usually free and lets me save the better paper. The absorption rate is very close to that of washi (“rice” mulberry paper), although washi tends to drag the brush a bit more.

17_doku_working_out_spacing

Now I start brushing out the actual kanji I’m working with today. It takes some time to work out proper spacing between the strokes, and between the radicals (subsets) within the kanji. What sucks is if you mess up at one point, it throws the whole character off. My teacher sometimes laughs at my vain attempts to “rescue” a character once I’ve made a mistake.

18_shu_and_doku_spacing

Here I am testing the spacing between shu and doku, making sure the kanji are in line with each other and of the same size. I was using the back of a previously-brushed page and that ended up badly for me because the paper was crinkled and the brush would “jump”, making it difficult to make smooth strokes.

19_sho_spacing_tricky

Sho is tricky because you have all these lines, which actually are different sizes and NOT parallel. However, the spacing needs to be consistent between them.

20_doku_sho_shu_kan_on_phonebook_paper

First attempt at the entire proverb. The right side (you read right, down, left, down) wasn’t bad, but I screwed up Shu (the top left kanji) which threw the bottom left kanji completely out of whack. Le sigh.

21_example_vs_attempt

And here is my final attempt for the day. Still not where I want it, although legible. At this point, I’d been brushing for three hours and needed a break! So I’ll pick up with this same proverb tomorrow and see if I can’t make more progress in matching the tehon (example) page.

Inktober Day 1

Oct1

day_1_hyakka_seihou

百花斉放 ひゃっかせいほう HYAKKA SEIHOU “A hundred flowers blooming” A blooming of the arts and sciences. I thought it was a fine sentiment to begin Inktober with.

I won’t be doing this every time, but I wanted to show a little of the background work that goes into this seemingly simple piece. Alas, I had no one around to take pictures as I actually brushed things out, but here’s an outline of the process.

百花斉放 is a yojijukugo, a four kanji character compound that acts as a proverb. There are thousands of these in the Japanese language, many of which came from Chinese works, which can make them a little challenging to translate. Jim Breen has a collection of them here, although I’m not sure what order he used. I found mine via this book here which was put together by my shodo teacher, Tony K. Skeen. In this book, the yojijukugo are in kana order (a,i,u,e,o/ ha, hi, fu, he, ho…etc) and therefore easier to find.

The first thing I do when I find a phrase I want to brush out is to cross-reference. In doing so, I double-check the translation, figure out the stroke order, and find examples of the style I want to brush out. This takes me across at least 3 or 4 dictionaries (or the internet if I can’t find what I need in the books).

1_prep_materials

I use the New Nelsons Japanese-English Character dictionary, Hadamitsky/Spahn’s A Guide to Writing Kanji and Kana for stroke order, and a 3-style Japanese Calligraphy Dictionary 現代書道三体字典 : コンパクト Gendai shodō santai jiten : Konpakuto (Modern shodo in three styles dictionary, compact version) by KISEKI Motohashi for the style examples.

Side note: if I am working on something for an SCA project, I will usually also try to find some style examples from extant historical documents. I know that there are some historical Japanese calligraphic dictionaries (I have seen a few), but with my middle-school Japanese, it’s hard for me to track them down easily.

So in the next four pictures, I cross reference each kanji from Hadamitsky/Spahn to the Gendai shodo santai jiten. I skipped taking pictures of looking up things in the Nelsons as it is a thick book and I couldn’t balance the camera!

2_hyaku_stroke_order_and_style_ref

Hyaku 百 meaning “100”

3_ka_hana_stroke_order_and_style_ref

Ka 花, which is the ON (Sino-Japanese) pronunciation of hana, meaning “Flower”

4_sei_stroke_order_and_style_ref

Sei 斉 meaning “equal” or in the case “all at one time”

5_hou_stroke_order_and_style_ref

Hou 放 meaning “release” or “set free”

So literally, one hundred flowers released at the same time, or as we might say more poetically in English “one hundred flowers blooming” or “a hundred flowers blossoming”. Translation: it’s both an art and a science! In this instance, the phrase is referring to a blossoming of the arts and sciences, like what we might call a golden era or renaissance.

I’d like you to notice a few things in these pictures. Compare the computer kanji that is in this entry to the written kanji in the larger book, and then the three examples in the smaller book. THIS is the difference between just writing kanji and doing calligraphy. One of the things I see so often is people using computer kanji as their basis for kanji used in SCA scrolls. NO. PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. It’s like using the Times New Roman font as an exemplar for a 14th century scroll!!

If you notice, the smaller book shows three types of writing for each kanji. From right to left (and remember, the Japanese read right to left, not left to right), the styles are Kaisho (block script), gyousho (semi-cursive script), and sosho (cursive script).

While I chose to use sosho for my phrase today, I still practiced the kaisho. The reason for that is to get the stroke order correct and notice how some of the elements transmute when used in cursive. The gyousho is very helpful for seeing how the change happened, and while it was and is a widely used form, I don’t like it much.

So next, I had to consider the paper I was planning to use. A merchant had sent me some samples of this handmade washi paper and I thought it might be nice to try. However, I had to take into consideration that the size is smaller than the paper I usually use, as seen below:

6_chosen_paper_versus_normal_paper_size

I often use phone book or newspaper to practice kanji on when I am trying to get a sense of the shape. Here’s a comparison of my small phone book paper to the sheet I wanted to use. I would have to keep the size difference in mind as I practiced.

7_chosen_paper_versus_small_phonebook_practice_paper_size

Again, I apologize for the lack of in-situ pictures. Here’s my normal set-up when doing brush calligraphy:

8_normal_set-up

Examples to the left so I can see them, brushes and suzuri (ink stone) to the right, paper up top. Bunshin paperweights hold the paper in place and below the paper is a shitajiki, felt that absorbs ink since it tends to seep through the paper. The garish plastic placemats are extra protection since I’m doing this work on my dining table!

So here are some practice runs on the various kanji, in both kaisho and sosho forms:

HYAKU

9_hyaku_practice_1_kaisho_sosho

10_hyaku_practice_sosho_form

KA

11_ka_hana_practice

SEI

12_sei_practice

HOU

13_hou_practice

And a few run-throughs of Hyakka Seihou. I’m messing a bit with the placement of the kanji in reference to each other. Sei especially wants to run larger than the others and is being a pain!

14_hyakka_seihou_practice_1

15_hyakka_seihou_practice_2

16_hyakka_seihou_practice_3

And finally, brushing the phrase on the special washi paper. I was actually going to do a couple of runs at this (because I wasn’t sure how the paper would take the ink), but the first one came out fairly well.

x_hyakka_seihou_finished

I actually wanted to do more practices, but honestly, there’s just a time when you have to do it and be done. It’s never going to be perfect to my eyes. The one thing I might have changed is leaving a bit more room at the left side for a seal signature. However, since I haven’t finished designing and carving my inkan (seal) yet, I felt the point was moot.

Hope this walk-through helps explain the process. The result is very simple and understated but there is a lot of work that goes on in the background!

Prepping for Inktober

Sep30

Decided to try Inktober this year as a way to encourage me to get into a daily art habit. I’m sure there will be challenges, as this is always a difficult time of year for me, and moreso this year, but in art is solace.

I don’t intend to follow any prompts. My only goal is to do something inky. And some of it will be modern and not SCA-related, because I get a bit weary of how SCA takes over all my hobbytime. Anyway, I intend to try different media and different types of things. There will be shodo, sumi-e, regular ink drawings, maybe some knotwork? I just want to play with the medium. Most of my drawing experience has actually been with graphite and charcoal, so there is a learning curve.

Here are some sketches I did today (to ink during October):

hats_in_high_wind_sketch

kali_sketch

samurai_sketch

veil_roman_sketch

I also prepped by finding several yojijukugo (four kanji compound sayings, kinda like shorthand proverbs) that I want to brush out. Probably in sosho, but we’ll see how I feel on the day of. I’m using the book Yojijukugo: 4 Character Compound Reference Source for Japanese Brush Calligraphy by my shodo teacher, Tony Skeen. He’s been urging me to do this anyway, so Inktober is a perfect excuse.

With the calligraphy, there is a lot of prep that goes into each finished project. I get the kanji from the book, but then I need to look it up in Nelson’s Japanese/English dictionary, then cross-reference it to one of my exemplars (different sources based on the style). This is to get the stroke order and also get a sense of what the stylized kanji is supposed to look like. Next comes the practice, where I get comfortable brushing out the kanji and also working out size and spacing. I’ll brush the whole piece out a few times before doing a final one.

(Arrgh, that reminds me, I still need to finish designing my inkan stamp!)

With the sumi-e, I have some instruction books with some exercises to work through. While I would love to do some color work, I think I’ll stick with black and white for this month. Same thing with the knotwork. I’ve done some knotwork on scrolls in the past but never felt very comfortable with it, so I’d like to play around with it a bit. Maybe mess about with some vinework, too.

Really looking forward to this. It’ll be fun!

Somewhere in the Corner of My Eye

Aug18

Real life has been extremely busy, although I did manage to make it to 3 SCA events in July (usually 1 or 2 is my limit, but things just worked out that way).

I’m not usually in the spotlight, but the cameras caught a glimpse of me at Coronation (at right, standing next to my Laurel, Countess Ylva):

coronation_1

At Calontir’s Kingdom Arts and Sciences, where I was helping out as a judge. Here I am talking to Master Addison from Gleann Abhann, who was visiting. Turns out he has a keen interest in Tea Ceremony and Bonsai, (of which I know very little) so it was a fascinating chat.

kas_2

And a quick glimpse of me (at left) from my own shire’s Feast of Eagles. I was part of the Server’s Auction, and also entertained playing recorder as part of a music trio. (No photos of that, alas.)

feast_of_eagles_1

The three above photos courtesy of Wilhelm Lich.

Got in some shodo lessons, as seen here, sight reading three different styles: kaisho, gyousho and sosho. SHO FU YU SHO IN “The wind brings a cleansing breeze through the pines.”

shodo_practice_20190814

Also working on getting Nelson dictionary numbers to a new Japanese calligraphy exemplar that I surprisingly found on Thriftbooks of all places! Nelson’s is the dictionary I used most for translation. Putting the Nelson reference number on the kanji helps me find things faster.

shodo_practice_20190816

Updates may be sparse over the next month or so, as I will be visiting with my family. I have some poetry that needs sharing and hope to get that typed up once I get back!

Art-Streak Day One

Mar1

So I decided to start “100 Days of Arts and Sciences” because I have a lot to get done, especially regarding sewing since not much of my old wardrobe fits anymore. 100 days from today will land me on the first Sunday of Lilies War. Seems like I did a lot today but some of it was continued from earlier and I am also counting study/practice because any project I do has a lot of practice/experiments/humiliating failures as part of the process. And research, always research.

Anyway, today I

1. Finished taking those huge wool curtains apart. Washing comes next but I need to figure out how I want to do that. (Dryer? Air dry? Can I even use Wa Paste in a high efficiency washing machine?)

Wool curtain harvest 1

Wool Curtain harvest 2

100_days_as_1_wool

2. Cut out material for a sloper to experiment with my kosode pattern. This pattern is for summer wear, so unlined.

100_days_as_1_kosode_sloper

3. Got in some yojijukugo (4 kanji idiom) calligraphy practice with the medium brush. It’s a good way to work out space and balance, and easier to see your mistakes.

100_days_as_1_shodo

4. Continued my study of kanji radicals. Not technically shodo since I use a pen or pencil, but important for learning stroke order and proportion.

100_days_as_1_radical_study

5. Also practiced my recorder a bit but forgot to take a picture. But I do have an awesome new wooden soprano recorder to play with! But here’s a picture of me at music practice a few weeks ago, with my friend’s cat helping me out!

Me and Tux 1

Definitely will not be able to do this much every day but here’s to a good start!

A Little and A Lot

Jun21

In which someone asks a question on the SCA Japanese FB page and scrambles my brain. HE Baron Akitsuki Yoshimitsu asked about the translation of a certain modern piece of Chinese calligraphy, dated 1958, by Wing Gig Fong, a Chinese-American artist.

Here’s the piece, which is owned by the Smithsonian institution. You can see the piece here on their webpage.

1984.124.91_1.tif

Wah…abstract modern sosho! My brain! The top character is almost certainly 少 (ON: shou KUN suku/suko) which means few, little. Which makes sense as the original Chinese for the phrase the piece was named was 少则得多则惑 “He who obtains has little, he who scatters has much”). But the second one has me puzzled. Maybe 不 (ON: fu KUN: zu) which means un-, non-. But while 少不 is not a really a word, 不少 (fushou) in Japanese means “not many” while 不少 ((bùshǎo) in Chinese means “a lot of”. It could be the artist is punning and including a little and a lot in the same piece. But I’m really stretching here and could be completely wrong. Sorry I can’t be of more help.

It’s certainly not a name or anything. Considering that it is a 20th century abstract piece, I don’t think I’m too far off in my guess of its meaning. But again, not sure on the lower kanji, and I do Japanese, not Chinese. (Any Chinese I know is second-hand through my Japanese studies, and I can’t pronounce it AT ALL.)

Anyway, that killed about two hours of my day. It’s so frustrating! I got to take an intensive Japanese course about 13 years ago, and have tried to learn on my own since then, but self-study is not easy, and my chances of doing the immersive thing and staying in Japan for 6 months to a year are nada.

If I am completely off base here, please comment and let me know. It’s the only way to learn!

A few notes here: modern sosho can be quite different from classical sosho, which tends to be very thin and whispy. The style I study with my shodo teacher, which was taught by the calligraphy master Kampo Harada-sensei, tends to be of a modern bent. For SCA purposes, most of the styles (tensho, reisho, kaisho, and gyousho) are not far off, but Kampo’s sosho was very stylized and modern. He could do the classical style, of course, but a lot of what I’ve seen of his own work has a very mid-20th century feel. It’s beautiful, but something to keep in consideration if you are working on a Japanese scroll for SCA–try to work off of pre-16th century examples. Copperplate is a beautiful hand for Roman-style letters, but not something the SCA would use in a scroll since it is more 18th-19th century. Same applies here.

A link about Kuzushiji

Jan31

Just putting this link here until I have more time to check into the subject. An Introduction to Kuzushiji.

Kuzushiji 崩し字 is that sosho-looking print script that was very popular in Edo-period texts. Very similar to sosho in several aspects, but lacks sosho’s elegance. Somewhere around here I have a book about the history of Japanese printing, and will look in that to see more.

I can make out some characters, due to my shodo studies, but can’t really say that I can “read” it.

Scroll: Calon Cross for Saito Takauji

Aug28

So now that it has been handed out, here are pictures of the scroll that I was working on. The Calon Cross is a Grant of Arms (GOA) level award in Calontir (they do pre-prints for AOA level awards) and is given out for service. Uji is a friend, so I was very happy to be given this assignment.

The text says: That the loyal civil acts of Saito Takauji, for the Society, the Grand Council, and as Gold Falcon Herald are excellent and will be rewarded, is stated thus. We raise him to the Order of the Calon Cross.
Damien, King
Issabel, Queen
Year of the Society 52 year, 8 month, 26 day

Saito Takauji dono ha Shakai ya Dai hyougi-kai no chuusei koto to kintaka denreisha koto ga shinmyou, onjou no jou koto kuden.
Shin juujika gumi ni irareru.

Damien mikado heika
Issabel chuugu heika

Shakai gojuu ni nen hachigatsu nijuu roku nichi
斎藤高氏殿社会大評議会忠誠事金鷹伝令者事神妙可有恩賞之状如件
心十字架組入
ダアミエン帝陛下
イサベル中宮陛下
社会五十二年八月二十六日

The model I used was from the Documents of Iriki, 96-2, #83-C, from Kenmu 3, 8th month, 17th day (September 22, 1336), given to one Shibuya Shigekatsu by Ashikaga Takauji, the first Shogun of the Ashikaga line. I took some set phrases from it, and added what phrases were needed for this award. I had Foro Pallavincino (Baron Christoforo from Northshield, who has a degree in Japanese and lived there for a few years), look over my Japanese text and make suggestions, which I then modified a bit. It is all in kanji–the hiragana that would be used in particles were not usually written down in these documents. Ink on washi paper, pre-mounted scroll. The kanji is written in kaisho script (the original was in gyousho script, but I was going for clarity here). The painting is based on a portrait of the poet Ki no Tomonori (who bears an amazing resemblance to Uji!), done in the Nise-e style.

takauji_finished_scroll_detail

takauji_full_scroll

I definitely learned a lot while doing this scroll. There are some things (mainly in the brushwork) that I feel could be better, but the recipient was very happy, and that is what matters. I’m looking forward to tackling another design in the future.