Japanese calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is the art of writing kana and kanji with brush and ink. Its expressive brushwork gives written characters visual rhythm and form.

Japanese brush: A writing brush with a flexible hair tip used in Japanese calligraphy and painting. Its changing tip width and pressure make the calligrapher’s strokes possible.
Kanji: Logographic characters used in Japanese writing, historically derived from Chinese characters. Kanji provide many of calligraphy’s complex, character-based forms.
Kūkai: A Japanese Buddhist monk, scholar, and calligrapher who founded the Shingon school in Japan. His celebrated brushwork helped establish calligraphy’s prestige in Heian Japan.
Gyosho: A semi-cursive Japanese calligraphic script that connects or simplifies some strokes while remaining readable. It occupies a middle ground between regular forms and highly cursive writing.
Zen Buddhism: A school of Buddhism emphasizing meditation and direct insight into the nature of mind. Zen communities cultivated brush writing as a disciplined form of expression.
Sumi ink: Black ink traditionally made by grinding an ink stick against an inkstone with water. Its density and flow determine the marks available to the brush.
Hiragana: A Japanese syllabary used for grammatical endings, particles, and words without common kanji. Its flowing forms are especially suited to cursive brush writing.
Ono no Michikaze: A Heian-period Japanese court calligrapher regarded as one of the Sanseki masters. His work helped define a distinctly Japanese style of brush writing.
Sosho: A highly cursive script style that abbreviates and connects strokes into flowing forms. Its compressed forms reveal how far brush writing can depart from everyday legibility.
Wabi-sabi: A Japanese aesthetic sensibility that finds beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and simplicity. Its values illuminate why irregular brush marks can be aesthetically prized.

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