FIRST CALLIGRAPHY LESSON

                                          Image via WikipediaEven though I've lived in Japan for seven years, I never tried shodou (Japanese calligraphy) before. What took me so long? Well, I thought it would be an interesting experience... but Japan is so full of 'interesting experiences' so I felt no urgency. Somehow I never got around to it until yesterday.

The husband of a new friend I met recently is a calligraphy teacher. She invited me to their home for lunch and a calligraphy lesson. After a delicious meal of chirashi-zushi, home-made tsukemono, and the best oden I've ever eaten, we relocated to the lesson room It was a large, pleasant room with several low tables covered with dark felt, one wall covered by shelves stuffed with reference books, and a sink for washing brushes in one corner.

The teacher showed me a few different styles of calligraphy and asked me to choose the style I preferred. He said he liked a more abstract style, and that it was easier for beginners because it took less practice. That sounded good to me, and I thought the abstract characters looked very attractive. Then he gave me a demonstration of how to use the brush to achieve three different effects, just painting spirals. After I tried out the brush with a few spirals of my own, we started to paint the character that means pleasure, or fun, 楽.

The first few attempts were to practice the shape. Then he showed me some ways to make it more interesting - how to create edges that bleed by loading the brush with more ink, and pressing harder on the paper, and how to mess up the brush with the first few strokes so that the strokes after that became streaky and more artistic.

When I could produce something that looked kind of OK, he encouraged me to sign it, and we finished the session with me painting the character onto a shikishi - an art board used for various kinds of Japanese art - as a souvenir to take home.

I expected an interesting experience. I didn't expect that it would be so much fun. I suppose I thought that practicing writing the same character over and over again could get rather boring. I've never been the kind of person who enjoys repetition. But actually, I think part of shodou's fascination  is that every stroke is unique. Every stroke has to be what it is. You aren't allowed to go back and try to improve it. You can't fix mistakes. There is only one chance for that moment, and that piece of paper. And the nature of the elements involved (absorbent paper, watery ink, a brush, a human being) means that perfect replication is impossible. So the aim of shodou isn't to produce perfection through repetitious practice, like other forms of art, it's to express the artist's vision. And maybe to capture beauty. I think Kitagawa-sensei's calligraphy is very beautiful!

 I'm totally hooked after just one go!

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