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IcerocketChannels: Asian ArtHirokazu KosakaJapanese Art
Japanese artist Hirokazu Kosaka instructs you on the basics of Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. This four part series includes (1) the importance of brushes, (2) preparation of ink, (3) demonstration of selected characters, and (4) an introduction to the evolution of characters from ancient form into present form.
I started my calligraphy lesson when I was a child, and I was given this brush from my father
and when I was in college, I was very curious that I wanted to know what this hair was made from
and I would ask him, but he would never tell me until I took it to a zoologist
to find it out, and few weeks later, I received a phone call and they told me that this hair was a elephant
and he asked me what part of the elephant and I thought it was a tail part and he said no
because it is so soft and he told me that this hair was from elephants inside of the ear. This is my first brush
and this brush was made by my great grandfather almost 120 years ago.
My father and I, we used to walk by the seashore and one day we found a dead whale and we thought maybe we can keep the spirits alive,
so we took the baleen from his mouth and brought it to the brush maker and had this made and this is the whale's,
not hair, but baleen from his mouth. We have lots of rats
in our home, and I remember when I was in high school, I trapped the mouse and took his whiskers and collected this much whiskers,
it took me about a year or so and this was made from the rats' whiskers.
Many of the brush was given to me by friends and monks, Buddhist monks, in our household
and for example, these are not hairs but feathers from a chicken
and this is also a feather, it's a peacock. This is also a chicken.
Japanese chicken have a very long tail, about 10 feet long and this is part of his tail, this is also a feather.
This is also a bird, but this is a hair, not a feather, and this is we have the largest bird in our earth
and this is ostrich and this is the eyelashes from the ostrich, this is a hair.
Also, this is a chicken, also. This is a feather, not a hair but feather. Many brushes are made from different animals.
For example, this one is a wolf, a sheep, this one is a cow, this one is a horse,
and rabbit, and this is a horse hair from Mongolia and a friend brought some hair
and I made a brush from it. Also, brush is not so much a feather or hair, but this you can make from
just the branches like this. This is straw I made for the brush.
This is not also a hair but this is two bamboo sticks that I boil it and hammer it very softly,
and I have all these fibers that is part of the bamboo. So, this is a part of the brush.
In this group, most softest hair is probably these two and these are my two boys first haircut
and when they were born, they had lots of hair and in around three month's time, they had a very long hair, so this is their haircut
for first time. So, there is no cut on the tip rather, very pointed hair
and apparently about eighty percent of this hair was growing in the mother's womb. So, they are human hair
and there are many, many brushes for different occasions, writing poetry, writing or copying chanting books,
or doing painting is another hobby of mine. So, these are a different type of brush and different hairs.
I am going to talk about ink that I had created today and this portion
is just water and this is an ink stick. What this is, is a charcoal, very solid charcoal
and it's made in this wooden stick.
And how to make this ink is we have a small room and inside the room there is a hearth and for many, many months,
we burn wood and the soot would land on this particular shelves
and collection of those soot, and water, and some glue and we create a soft form of clay and we put the clay into this pocket
and then face with this wood and tie it and leave it for about two weeks and when you take out this,
when it dries, this form of stick comes out and all it is, is the solid charcoal
or soot. And when we mix with water, the black of the soot come out and this is ink.
And there is many, many charcoals. For example, this is a large one and then there is a small ones like this
and these are charcoals and when you go buy the charcoal, they tell you the gradation of this charcoal,
if you mix it with water, it has become little bit grayish. This one, this is purple one. So, this is a black-purple ink
which is made from an oak tree. There is many, many different color of black depending on what kind of
tree that you had burned. For example, this one, too, is a different type of gray and black. I had a large one like this
and is quite heavy and it will last for a long time and
these are also charcoal which is covered with gold and silver and when you mix your ink, your ink stone,
these gold particles will come out. When you paint it, there is sparkle of gold and silver in the painting for the calligraphy.
Some of them are very elaborate and the paint looks like this painting and gold leaf on it. It don't have to be square
or circle, it could be a shape of a boat and these were very traditional kind of shapes that came from China.
When I started to learn how to do calligraphy, or even to learn the Chinese or Japanese characters, first day,
I think I remember the first word was tree and tree is written like this...
and I was told that if you write two trees right next to each other,
it means a small forest and if you put three trees
together like that, it means deep forest. But, if you write this character,
it means rain or mist right next to two trees
like that, it doesn't mean rain forest, but it means lonely. If a man goes into a small forest
by himself and there is a mist right in front of the forest, the man feels very lonely and this is the character for loneliness.
This particular character came
from a pictograph symbol of a bird wing...like that
and this character means heart or your mind or your spirits.
So, if you put a wing of a bird
and with your heart being caressed by these wings, it means sad. This character means sad.
This character came from a symbol of a yarn or five colored string, it means yarn,
and if you put this yarn or string with a character
meaning to meet, it means painting, so five colored string with meeting, it means painting.
This character represents a roof,
and this character is symbol for pig, and this character, for Chinese character, is for house.
A person standing and person lying down became
this character and this character and they eventually
became this character. It means to transform. This character is a person standing
and this person is lying down, upside down, meaning that someone had died and this we call transformation.
If you put a grass on top of this transformation, this character means flower. Because flower, it blossoms and dies and that's what the symbol means.
In China, more than 3,000 years ago, this character started to transform to the present form of Chinese character or even Japanese characters.
To speak or to converse, there was a mouth here and with fire to represent speaking.
Perhaps there was between these dinner time, there was some sort of conversation going on
and eventually this character became like that and this fire became like that...
this character and then at the present time,
perhaps maybe in Han dynasty, it was written this character.
The easier one like that symbol is a mountain and present character for it is like that, a mountain.
This symbol represents river,
and present form is like that.
We talked about person standing like that and a tree like that, and at present form,
person next to a tree represents rest, the person is resting and this is the character for rest.
This symbol represents sun and this represents moon and present form
when you put sun and moon together, it means light. Light means bright.
Another one is when you put sun and if you put tree on top of it, like that,
it means east because the sun is rising behind the tree, it means east.
This character meaning fish and present form for fish is like that.
For horse...it is like that
and that's the present form for horse.
For a bird...that is a bird.
This represents a moon, but also a part of the day that is more an early evening
and this represents a mouth and present format like this
and this represents the name. In the early evenings, a little bit getting dark and when somebody talks,
and asks for your name, it's hard to know who you are, so this came from that situation.
This represents fire and this is the present form for fire.
This represents talking and if you put two fires together, it means to speak.
This, remember, is a character for a bird and if you put a mouth right next to it, it means to sing or chirp,
the bird is singing...and if you put a bird with a mountain, it means island, where the birds are.
I think rain...with symbol like this and in present form rain is like this.
Every character have, we call it strokes. For example, for tree, it is 1, 2, 3, 4 strokes
and for mind or heart, stroke 1, 2, 3, 4 these are the strokes.
For example, for flower, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 strokes.
If you are the first beginner and don't know this character, you go to a dictionary and go under four strokes
and look up all the four strokes in the dictionary and there must be thousands of them, but also there is a category
that is for plants, animals, and some spiritual or some of them are just objects. So, if you go under plants or nature, you'll find under four stroke, this tree or even flowers, etc.
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