Calligraphy
An attempt at calligraphy by Joshua Friesen
A few days ago I was able to visit a calligraphy studio (Norihito Calligraphy Studio) with a couple of friends from work.
To Enjoy Calligraphy
Shodou calligraphy is one of the very important Japanese cultures, and there are many active and potential learners.
Calligrapher
What is Shodou (Calligraphy)
Categorized in calligraphy, Shodou is the formative arts express beauty of a characters texture by writing. It requires beauty of expression such as use of brush, organization, ink color and arrangement of characters, and also requires beauty of content such as meaning of characters and style.
Calligraphy mainly uses brush and writes characters on a sheet of calligraphy paper. There are numerous techniques used in nowadays calligraphy, and they are used according to the styles of handwriting.
Calligraphy has its roots in China. History of Japanese calligraphy, Shodou, started when Chinese characters, Kanji, was introduced into Japan. Due to Hiragana characters have created in Heian period (794~1185), Japanese calligraphy development is very unique.
Difference between Shodou and other calligraphy
There are calligraphy class in Japanese elementary and middle school. Purposes are not only to learn characters itself but to learn how to write beautiful form and texture of characters. This learning process is called Shosha, or literally means write and copy in Japanese. This is more practical than Shodou.
For Shodou, it aims to express a beauty of characters. Shodou is more in artistic side contrast to what Japanese learn in school. So you won’t learn Shodou in school. Or, in other words, they are totally different.
Kakizome
In a culture of Japanese Shodou, there is special meaning for the first calligraphy in its year. Usually, in January 2nd, there is event that they write a good meaning idiom, lyrics or even drawings too. Sometimes this event becomes homework of winter break, but it is hardly see this in general family anymore.
