Faces in Letters

                                                     henohenomoheji  へのへのもへじ

The above face is a standard Japanese face design in kana letters.  I don't know who created it or when, but this has been used in many designs for centuries.  Ryokan, a Buddhist monk and poet, drew this kind of face, but I'm unsure if he was the original creator for this  idea not.  Each artist draws in her or his own way, and all of us are artists including children and adults without any art education.

We are all artists.  That's my excuse to upload these photos.  Someone perhaps has done similar drawings like these, but I wanted to create faces in alphabets.

adamc

                                  ztzuj

xOxHU

                                                                                                                               GHGVL       

                           QIQND

Let's have fun.  Please draw your own and let me see it.

A Shodo Exhibit

Today, I made a visit to the 54th Tohoshoten (the name of this exhibition) in Tokyo.  The exhibit is open until tomorrow, 29th, at the Sunshine Bunka Kaikan in Ikebukuro.  In the photo, Iida Kazuko Sensei and I are standing next to her kana shodo.  The style of this kana shodo is called chowa-tai which means it is balanced using a few kanji characters.  This is also called chirashi which means scatter or let it fall.  I love chirashi.  It is a casual art, very playful, but it demands high spirited creativity.  It's up to us to choose what kind of kana for each, how many in one line, how many lines in one group, and so on.  Depending on the way we leave spaces and the movement of over all lines, we can express a lot.  

The above poem is "Mountain Cherry Blossoms" by Wakayama Bokusai.

young leaves sprouted and spread out

like clouds

the fallen remains of

mountain cherry blossoms





Iida sensei and her students.  I love this photo.  The movement, a man behind, all the unique and excellent arts created by the teachers and judges of Tohoshoten organization.  This was room No. 1, and it was the best, of course.   This exibit has about 50 rooms.  It was fabulous.

This shodo was created by Higashino Yukiko san.  She is a classmate of mine.

 

This sho was created by Yano Chiyo san.  She is a pupil of Iida Sensei.  I want to let you know that there is no age limit in arts.  The author will be 90 this year.   Her sho is as young as Iida Sensei.  I can't read what it is written, but I'm sure it is something to do with love!  I can't wait to be a cool 90 year old like her.

A Kana

む　（mu）

The origin of  a hiragana む is 武.   武者（musha) and 武士(bushi)　mean samurai, but the meaning wasn't so important when developing Japanese letters from Chinese characters.   無　is also む which means nothing.   In one of Nishida Kitaro's books, he wrote that 無 is love when he compared with the western concept.  I agree.  

無 holds everyting else.  

Talking of love, I fell in love with the letter Iida Kazuko Sensei wrote for one of Basho poems.  I asked her to draw that particular む in the same way.  She brushstroke in red ink right then and there a few times and gave me that as you see above photo.  It is just a む.  But it has characters.  Don't you think?  They are, in fact, two kanji characters,  and the character, in other sense,  is nothingness but in a samurai way.   We call this kind of arts, playful.  Yes!  Playing is the key.  You can interpret your own way, and choose your own brushstrokes.   I've uploaded kana shodo blog spots again because my past "Kana Shodo" blog spot is the most popular so far.   Thank you for appreciating our traditional art!  

Below is my Japanese blog, and the second photo shows the old pond and a frog poem by Basho in which that same む　appeared.  http://keiko-booksandtalksfromlosangeles.blogspot.com/2010/12/blog-post.html 

Kana Shodo Part 1

Above, my instructor is showing a better spacing among the sections of a written ancient Japanese poem. The poem was brushstroked by a male veteran classmate. He has been working on it to enter into a prestigious newspaper contest. I envy his fine brushstrokes, so I want to show it to you. This class is held twice a month at the Yokohama Asahi Culture Center. This is one art that does not require speaking Japanese. In fact, some people practice shodo through mail correspondence.



It's a poem, and a visual art. Spacing and contrasting dark and fading light brushstrokes matter a lot in this art. Sometimes, it flows like a gentle stream, and sometimes, the flow becomes quite dynamic.



This is the last section of the previous poem and the author's red stamp. Someday, I want to draw like the author and stamp my own. See the center line. The top two letters are written as 天の (amano). It is the same as my name. It can mean a milky way, or the heavenly field. The poem probably describes the ancient tale of July 7th. In the romantic story, a couple meet once a year over a milky way if it does not rain.



Above, this scroll was done by a young female classmate. She is also a veteran. She started shodo when she was young, and in this class, she has been coming for 10 years, she said. I admire her work everytime I see her. She wrote some of the hundred poems called Hyakunin-ittushu. Can you see golden pieces sprinkled on the washi(rice) paper? In any arts, we can escalate in spending more money if we choose to.



Well, last month, I became an official student at the 10th rank in shodo! I just submitted my first work. Big deal? Yes, it is! Above sample is from my textbook called Wakanroeishu, and I'll be working on it next. The sample is more than 1000 years old, and it looks easy, but it's actually very difficult. Below is my rough translation of the ancient poem. I wish to rid of my ego and become as innocent as the author of this poem. Well, at least, I'll try to be during my shodo practice.

My love knows no direction and no ending.
To see you is the only thing I can think of.

Japanese Beats

A while ago, a Japanese friend of mine told me that her American husband said that spoken Japanese sounds like staccato. Japanese is my native language, so I can’t tell the sound objectively. But if the language sounded in staccato, it would be certainly not a beautiful language. But we Japanese think of our language beautiful. Separately, most people would agree that the French language sounds beautiful. I absolutely agree. So and but, I hope you don’t ask me which is more beautiful.

Because of the staccato element, I want to talk about beats. Japanese beats are very simple. I envy the beginners of Japanese language because I’ve been struggling with English even now. So if you’re beginners in Japanese, you have advantage.

According to the book, “Japanese,” by Kindaich Haruhiko, a linguist, Japanese language has 112 beats, and English has over 3000. For instance, tobichiru (splash) is 4 beats because we can separate it as to-bi-chi(or ci)-ru. In English, splash is only one beat. I didn’t know this until recently. No wonder I had hard time in making English haiku in the past.





Since the number of Japanese beats is small, children can memorize them pretty easily. And they can also dictate what they hear pretty easily. They just need to write as they hear each beat. So once you learn all the beats, anyone can search any word in the dictionary. In English, we have to know how to spell at least the first alphabet such as “know.” In Japanese, if you master all hiragana, you can write. No spelling needed in writing Japanese. Isn’t that great?

But as always, behind the simplicity, complex features are hidden. I don’t know why, but we have many same sounding words. The other day, I replied back to Jitu on my “Names and Preference” blog about the meaning of Keiko,. Jitu looked at a few Web sites and found two translations of Keiko. First, I don’t know how they came up with those meanings. Second, our names usually come in Kanji, and each kanji has a unique meaning. There are many different kanji for Keiko. Pronunciations can be the same. Also we have same sounding verbs and nouns. So when we speak, sometimes, we miscommunicate. This is a downside to Japanese language. To avoid miscommunication, we need to put extra effort to describe it clearly in any way we can.

So, Japanese beats are simple but other things are complex. And like heart beats, we breathe and sleep with them day in and day out. We feel comfortable and our aesthetic comes out of those 112 simple beats.

The author of “Japanese” wrote an interesting story. In the beginning of WWII, Hitler made a visit to Japan. I didn’t know that. I was surprised to read this. Anyway, Kitahara Hakushu is a very famous Japanese poet. He was asked to make a welcome poem for Hitler—can you imagine?-- and someone composed a melody. At that time, they all didn’t know what Hitler was up to, I guess. Isn’t that weird? A professor who sang the song followed the German way of singing. To Hakushu, the beats were all wrong. They had a heated argument.

Anyway, the author went on to say that Japanese are sensitive to our beats because not many exist. To this statement, I agree.