will need three other small things that can be prepared at home-a paperweight, a container of water for adding to the ink, and a piece of good quality felt for an shitajiki undercloth. Normally (his cloth is in a restful colour such as green, dark blue or black and it is to be laid under the paper. The ink will often seep through the paper and as felt repels water, the ink has no chance of getting through to the table. Anything 28cm x 36cm or larger is fine.
All should be laid out in front of you (as in the example) with the work you will be copying, (he tehon, (e.g. the examples given later in the book) at your left. The ink and brush should be placed on your right. This will facilitate writing and save knocking over the indelible ink. It was easy to recognize the house of Chinese calligrapher, Chung Yu as everything from the rocks and trees in the garden to the floors and doors of his home was spattered with ink. Beware!
Things to know
before getting started
There are only two rules in calligraphy, easy to remember, but hard to carry out sometimes. Firstly the characters must be written in a certain stroke order. There are general rules on this, but like the best kept rules exceptions do exist. The stroke order has been given for the examples in the text. Secondly the characters must be written only once. That means no altering, touching up or adding to them afterwards. Unlike oil painting where mistakes may be scraped off or painted over, in calligraphy mistakes must stand as they are. This is what gives the characters “life” and movement; writing a stroke twice nijūkaki kills the feeling and burdens the character down. Occasionally the ink runs out in the middle of a character kasure. This is permissible so long as the form of the character remains discernible.
It is advisable to make lots of ink and any left over may be put, in a jam jar with the top screwed on tightly to slow evaporation. Another idea is to slip a couple of copper coins in with the mix as this will help stop the ink going off.
While making the ink study the example carefully so that you may fully understand the stroke order and what has to be done. This enables you to begin as soon as the ink is ready without interrupting the state of concentration you have built up while making your ink.
The average number of characters written on a sheet of hanshi with a middle size brush is either five or six. When writing five, space them as you would for six, but leave the last square blank as this is where one normally puts one’s name. More on this is explained in the section on katakana. An aid to laying the characters out is to fold the sheet vertically in half giving a right and left sector. If this is not helpful enough, the paper may be folded into six sections so that each character will have its own area. The only other possible method one can use is to place a grid on the shitajiki visible through the paper. This provides the best guide, but developing too much dependence on it will make for bad habits. Anyway, when you practice the examples in this text make it a custom to write six characters to a page.
Paper is, it must be remembered, expensive so even if you have made a mistake do not throw the paper away too hastily. You can still write over the same letters many times until you have them down pat. This is beneficial also because you can then concentrate on a single character or even a single stroke of a character in these moments without having to think of the entire composition. Do not expect to be able to write a good copy the first time. Only a master calligrapher can do that. Write the same example fifty or more times. Then you will understand its every twist and turn by heart and will be able to write it without even referring to the model tehon. The calligrapher Chao Meng Fu of the Yuan Dynasty was said to have worn out the sleeves of all his garments because he was so diligent in his practice of the fundamentals.
The Chinese copy their teacher’s example by several different methods. Most popular among these is to place their paper atop their teacher’s example. This is not a good idea because in time the model will become illegible and one will then end up practising one’s own mistakes. The aspiring student too, may be likened to a little fledgling learning to fly; he gains no confidence by copying directly. It is almost as if he does not jump sooner or later, he will never learn to fly. If it puts off leaving the nest forever, the initial jump only becomes all the more difficult. A youngster may distract his watchers with a lot of fluttering and unintentional aerobatics, but that is the fastest route to learning. In Japan copying the model directly is regarded as cheating and most teachers will be able to tell the difference.
In the gyōsho the characters seem to have been dashed off quickly, but that is not the case. What gives this impression is the undulation of the stroke. It is thick and thin and in places the amount of ink on the brush the ink seems to have run out kasure. The fact is, it was written that way intentionally. Writing in this style is rather like driving, go fast on the straights, but slow down on the corners! Even in the other styles of writing the speed is not the important thing; keep a constant speed, not too fast else one has no control and not too slow as either the ink floods out and drenches the paper nijimi or the shaking of your hand will be evident to the viewer.
Teachers use an orange-red ink shuboku to correct copies of their students’ work. Corrections lead the student to realize that a copy need not be exactly the same as the model so long as the rules of writing have been respected. Here is where personal interpretation comes into play. Sometimes a character written exactly the same as the model will be corrected where it appears to con form to the model and reasons for this correction are various and intuitive. They are learned only after long experience. The most common fault is in characters that may be viewed as a pair. Individually they are good, but as a pair they are lacking in some way. When studying by oneself there is of course no teacher close at hand so it is only by writing copies many, many times and comparing them to good models that one can begin to perceive one’s weaknesses. Another good method is to turn the paper around and look at it from the back. The bad areas seem to stand out then. When you have managed to write a good copy, place it aside for a couple of days and then come back to it once more. It is certain that by looking at it afresh your sense of appreciation will have changed.
A brush usually has a life of about three years if well treated. This means washing it thoroughly after writing and taking care not to wash out all the starch. After wiping, the brush should be hung up to dry. Wash your suzuri ink slab too as the ink will dry into a solid cake if you do not.
Left handed people have to learn to write with their right hands because holding the brush in the left hand leaves the hairs pointed the wrong way and the correct pressure cannot be applied to the strokes. The same skill may be achieved, simply spend more time on the elementary steps.
Actually starting
Place your paperweight at the top of a sheet of paper and lightly place the fingers of your left hand near the bottom left of the sheet to hold the paper taut. Grasp the brush as shown.
It should not feel awkward, but in time become a living extension of your arm. Allow the power to flow down your arm on to the paper by using the brush as your conductor. The thumb locks the brush by pressure against the upper joint of the forefinger. Forefinger and middle finger exert pressure inwards and the slightly crooked ring and little fingers exert pressure to the outside. The brush should be held between a third and halfway up for most styles of calligraphy and as much as two thirds of the way up the shaft for writing semi-cursive gyōsho because the brush will require more latitude of movement. Observe the following points and you should find the brush doing just as you want.
1) Keep the palm open
2) Always keep the shaft of
