Japanese Calligraphy: variations of “月” (moon)
A bunch of artistic variations of the Japanese kanji character for “moon”, 月.
Category Archives: Calligraphy
Calligraphy brush unboxing: Ikkyuuen Umihotaru (“Sea Firefly”)
On a recent trip to Japan I stopped by a calligraphy studio in Kyoto and got a lesson with an expert. I talked about this in detail in this podcast episode here. In that studio I purchased a brush which is not available anywhere but in person, so I thought I would record video showing… Read More »
Studying calligraphy in Japan
On a recent trip to Japan, I took a 1-on-1 lesson with a skilled calligrapher in Kyoto (Chifumi Calligraphy Tokyo). Having primarily studied calligraphy without a teacher, it was an extremely educational experience, not to mention fun (the featured image shows the final artwork I produced from that class). While in Kyoto, I also stopped… Read More »
Japan travels: Shimadai Gallery (calligraphy photo collection)
On a recent trip to Japan I stopped by Kyoto, where there happened to be a calligraphy exhibit opened in the Shimadai Gallery, a relatively small museum located walking distance from Karasuma Oike Station. Having been into calligraphy (書道) pretty heavy as a hobby the last few months, I was really blown away by the… Read More »
Japanese Calligraphy: The Resurrection of a Brush
These days calligraphy has been taking a big chunk of my hobby time, and I feel like I have been gradually improving. However, the other day something strange happened to one of my brushes, and after much research and experimentation I finally managed to solve the issue, so I wanted to talk about this for… Read More »
Japanese educational book: 筆ペン練習帳 (Calligraphy pen practice notebook) by 鈴木 曉昇 (Gyoushou Suzuki)
On a recent trip to Hawaii I stopped by a BOOKOFF store that had an excellent selection of used books, and I wanted to write a review about one of the books I ended up purchasing there. It’s called 筆ペン練習帳 (fudepen renshuuchou) and is written by 鈴木 曉昇 (Gyoushou Suzuki). You can roughly translate the… Read More »
Japanese literature review: “The Glimmer of Ink” (墨のゆらめき）By Shion Miura (三浦しをん）
Being busy with various things, I haven’t had a chance to read much paper-media Japanese literature in the last few months. But when I saw “The Glimmer of Ink” (墨のゆらめき）by Shion Miura (三浦しをん）in the Beaverton Kinokuniya bookstore, I decided to take another dive back into the delightful world of Japanese literature. Shion Miura is known… Read More »
Japanese book review: 「書道」の教科書 (Calligraphy Textbook) by 横山豊蘭 (Houran Yokoyama)
A few weeks ago I began learning the art of Japanese calligraphy, which is called “shodou” (書道). I posted a lengthy article here on some of the things I discovered, and included some hints for those interested in learning shodou. Right around the time I finished that article, a book arrived that I had purchased,「書道」の教科書… Read More »
The world of Japanese calligraphy: my first few weeks learning 書道 (shodou)
After spending a few weeks studying and practicing Japanese calligraphy (書道） I decided to write a detailed post about my experiences as an introduction to those who are interested in this artform.