Introduction

Ezra Pound wrote in ABC of Reading that "poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music" and "music begins to atrophy when it gets too far from dance." This book is an attempt to investigate, explicate, and ultimately celebrate seventy-seven works of Japanese calligraphy; their scripts and styles will be discussed in historical and cultural contexts, but the primary focus is upon the works as individual dances of line and form in space.

To most Westerners, East Asian calligraphy does not mean but is. If we cannot read the words, it becomes pure visual experience. And yet, unlike abstract gestural art, we know that it has another meaning, that the written words must signify something to someone. Is this mystery solved by knowing the translation, or will we still miss some of the magic of the characters, in most cases complete words unto themselves? How much would it help to know the stroke order, so we can re-create the calligraphy in our minds? Is it vital to know the Chinese and Japanese historical and stylistic precedents for a work of calligraphy?

If we allow ourselves to be discouraged by such questions, we might never attempt to understand this art. However, the deeper mystery is how directly and strongly calligraphy can reach us when we give it our focused attention. Responding to it as linear movement through space, we may be able to appreciate the art more completely than someone sidetracked into puzzling out the text. Knowing that there is a structure and meaning behind the free flow of brush strokes, we can yet see the work as pure visual expression.

In East Asia, calligraphy has been considered the highest of all forms of art for more than fifteen centuries. This appreciation has been in part due to the lofty position held by the scholar-artist, and in part due to the expressive potential of more than fifty thousand Chinese characters that can be written in six different forms of script with a seemingly infinite number of graphic variations. Created with ink on paper or silk by the flexible animal-hair brush that responds to every impulse of the artist, calligraphy remains a highly respected form of artistic expression in East Asia today. In Japan, where a vastly different language had to accommodate the use of Chinese characters (kanji), two syllabaries with less complex structural and visual forms (kana) were developed to supplement these graphic shapes. Nevertheless, accomplished Japanese calligraphers continue to write in Chinese, largely because of the opportunities for creative artistry.

In the Western world, calligraphy using only ten numbers and an alphabet with twenty-six letters has had a much more modest position in the arts, but interest in East Asian calligraphy has grown tremendously in recent years. This is true both in scholarly and artistic circles, with several major exhibitions, and in popular culture, where Chinese character tattoos have become popular with young people and with professional musicians and athletes. A deeper understanding of calligraphy still eludes us, however, and 77 Dances is an attempt to make a step in this direction.

This study examines the remarkably creative flowering of the art of writing during Japan's early modern period. In 1568, a new opulent age called the Momoyama period began with the move toward reuniting Japan after many decades of civil wars. The subsequent Edo period (beginning in 1600 or 1615, depending on the historian) consolidated the government in the hands of the Tokugawa Shoguns, who ruled until 1868, when Japan opened to the West. During this "early modern" period of three centuries, the arts—including calligraphy—flourished with a great variety of styles and patronage. Texts ranging from thorny Zen conundrums to gossamer haiku poems were written with verve, energy, and creativity, displaying how deeply calligraphy had penetrated into the social fabric of Japan.

During the three hundred years of relative peace and prosperity, many groups of calligraphers created works for increasingly diverse audiences. A woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1864) shows that calligraphy was so popular in the mid-nineteenth century that a mother holds the brush in her mouth so as not to disturb her sleeping baby.

Other practitioners included professional calligraphers, Chinese-style poets, Confucian scholars, painters, Buddhist monks, devotees of courtly waka poetry, and haiku masters. Examining the varied threads of the cultural fabric reveals that these artistic worlds maintained their own independence while interacting to create a rich brocade of calligraphic techniques and styles.

Calligraphy is sometimes considered to be a difficult art to understand. Until now, most Chinese and Japanese studies, and the few books in Western languages, have been primarily concerned with providing the historical background and artistic lineage of calligraphers: with whom did they study, by whom were they influenced, and what ancient masters' styles did they follow? While these questions are certainly important, a combination of contextual and purely visual approaches may be more useful. We are past the point where viewers need feel that they must read the calligraphy to enjoy it. In fact, even experts sometimes disagree on which words have been written, especially in cursive script, and one well-known Chinese connoisseur sometimes first views a calligraphy upside down so he can examine and appreciate it purely as art before becoming engrossed in deciphering the text.

This is not to say that the meanings of the words in calligraphy are unimportant, and one of the questions pursued in this book is the controversial issue of how much the text influences the style. Perhaps surprisingly, some experts believe that there is little direct relationship between the two, while others suspect that there are many interconnections to be explored. This issue has to be considered case by case, and readers can have the pleasure of coming to their own conclusions; but we must remember that a mediocre text written beautifully is fine calligraphy, while a superb poem written poorly is not. By avoiding stress upon reading the characters, Westerners may be able to experience the purely artistic values of calligraphy—the choreography of line and form in space—more immediately than many East Asians. It is this sense of movement, ultimately of dance, that gives life to calligraphy, and therefore in this book, a good deal of visual analysis will be added to historical and cultural considerations.

This study begins with basic information on calligraphy for those not conversant with the art. This fundamental information enables viewers to follow the movement of the brush from beginning to end, just as the work was created. We cannot perceive a painting this way (did the artist paint the house first, or the mountain?), but the experience of viewing calligraphy is much more like the experience of music. They are both arts that move through space-time, and we can sense in calligraphy its faster and slower rhythms, stronger and gentler touches, wetter and drier textures, and even louder and softer tones. With practice, viewers can respond to the artist's breath, follow the movement of the artist's fingers, hand, arm, mind, heart, and body, and ultimately share the special and particular energy that informs and suffuses each work. The seventy-seven examples illustrated and discussed in this book have been chosen not only because the artists are historically important, but also because the varieties of scripts and touches enable them to become artistic recordings of personal character and individual expression.