Shodō: writing as an art of line and arrangement

Ink in the brush, pressure, speed and the paper’s absorbency affect thickness, tone and texture. An inkstone serves the preparation of ink. A seal can also contribute to the composition.

Five familiar categories of Chinese-character writing are seal, clerical, regular, running and cursive scripts. Seal script retains older character structures; clerical script develops a flatter, spreading form. Regular script separates strokes more clearly, while running and cursive scripts link and abbreviate them within conventions. Rinsho means studying and copying a model’s strokes, structure and arrangement. Kana developed from character writing, offering connected strokes and scattered layouts for poetry.

Rinsho studies an existing work, but it is not limited to copying every visible shape. Keirin attends to form, irin interprets the model’s intention, and hairin writes it from memory. In creative work, the writer chooses how to present a selected text through script, handling and composition. The Japan Calligraphy Education Society teaches work that develops from classical study into compositions of one’s own, and assesses copying and creative composition separately.

Early writing and calligraphic models

Early writing in Japan included administrative records and Buddhist texts. Nara scribes copied sutras; Heian calligraphers studied Chinese models as kana writing developed. Early Heian figures Kūkai, Tachibana no Hayanari and Emperor Saga are known as the Three Brushes. Kūkai studied in Tang China and brought back approaches influenced by Wang Xizhi and Yan Zhenqing. Ono no Tōfū, Fujiwara no Sukemasa and Fujiwara no Yukinari—the Three Traces—are associated with the development of wayō writing. Yukinari’s Poems of Bai Juyi (1018), now in the Tokyo National Museum, is one surviving example.

Lines and brushwork at the opening

At the opening, the title of a poem about enjoying the moon with guests on the fifteenth night of the eighth month occupies its own column. The verse continues to the left. Character size, stroke width and ink tone vary within the columns: heavy dark forms sit beside lighter, finer ones, and the intervals between characters expand and contract. The museum identifies the slightly inclined brushwork, called sokuhitsu, and softly turning strokes as features of its wayō style.

Bai Juyi’s poems and coloured paper

The text itself remains Chinese poetry: eight poems from volume 65 of Bai Juyi’s collection, written on differently coloured sheets. The scroll combines Japanese-style brushwork with Chinese poetry.

Medieval lineages and writing models

Court lineages, temples and tea gatherings provided different settings for medieval writing. Prince Son’en’s late-Kamakura Shōren’in tradition developed into Edo Oie-ryū. Its use in official documents and printed school models such as Teikin Ōrai carried it into terakoya classrooms. From the Muromachi period, fragments of admired old manuscripts were also mounted as hanging scrolls for tea gatherings, alongside Zen monks’ ink writing. A manuscript fragment could acquire a new purpose as a displayed object.

Edo models and Qing calligraphy

Early Edo calligraphers Konoe Nobutada, Hon’ami Kōetsu and Shōkadō Shōjō—the Kan’ei Three Brushes—studied Heian models while developing individual approaches. Monks arriving from China, including Ingen, introduced Ming styles. In 1880 Yang Shoujing brought Six Dynasties models to the attention of Meiji writers including Kusakabe Meikaku and Iwaya Ichiroku. The available models changed with renewed exchange.

Modern exhibitions and display

Modern exhibitions changed viewing conditions too. The first National Industrial Exhibition in 1877 displayed character and kana calligraphy beside painting and craft. Museum shows and societies’ open exhibitions subsequently made wall display familiar. Postwar practice included modern poetic calligraphy, large-character work and avant-garde approaches, exploring contemporary texts, a few enlarged characters and more abstract uses of line.

War and postwar institutional rebuilding

War disrupted these institutions. Several associations were merged into the patriotic Shodō Hōkokukai in 1943. The Japan Calligraphy Art Academy formed in 1946 and resumed exhibitions; Nitten added calligraphy in 1948, while a newspaper-sponsored national show began that year and later became the Mainichi Shodō Exhibition. Different organisations provided renewed channels for open submissions and public display.

Brush writing in postwar schools

Brush teaching in schools also changed. Early postwar elementary writing instruction concentrated on pencils and pens. The 1951 curriculum guidance allowed schools, where a need was recognised, to teach brush writing from the fourth grade upward as part of Japanese-language study. Everyday handwriting instruction and artistic work for exhibitions were related practices with different educational purposes.

The manuscript’s purpose

Letters, diaries, poems and copied sutras served different purposes before later viewers appreciated their handwriting as art. Their texts help explain the occasions for which they were written.

Writing and ownership notes

The same scroll also records its later ownership. Yukinari’s closing note apologises for the strokes because he borrowed a sutra mounter’s brush. A subsequent note by Fujiwara no Sadanobu records buying this scroll and a work by Ono no Tōfū from a woman selling objects in 1140. The 1140 acquisition note follows the poems Yukinari wrote in 1018.