To be honest, my writing is terrible—perhaps I should blame it on the brush.

The brilliance of the body and life conveyed by calligraphy

Akiko Mukai

‘To be honest, my writing is terrible—perhaps I should blame it on the brush.‘ is an exhibition title so humorous that you can’t help but smile upon reading it. If you have ever attended a calligraphy class, you may even relate to the sentiment. But you may be a little surprised to learn that the words come from Yu-ichi Inoue, an artist known for daring single-character calligraphy. He wrote these words in a letter sent along with a rinsho（a practical brushwork study of a great classic work）that was requested of him in 1952, before he had developed his now well-known style. What did Yu-ichi’s life look like at that time?

That year, Yu-ichi had graduated from training with his master, formed the Bokujin-kai（Ink People Society）with his peers, and developed a close relationship with artist Saburō Hasegawa. Hasegawa’s aesthetic values, which emphasized a disregard for technical skill, resonated with Yu-ichi, who did not aim for neatly written characters. For example, Yu-ichi’s Yūgata （CR53009）（1953）, which is included in his catalogue raisonné as having been shown as part of Abstract Japanese Calligraphy, an exhibition held in the United States in 1954, is a work in which many characters fill a sheet of paper. Its clumsiness is also its appeal, and there are also similarities in the way he wrote the letters featured in this exhibition. If Yu-ichi did not aim to write neat characters, what did he mean by “terrible” writing?

We have been taught to recognize neat handwriting as “skillful.” This is due to the compulsory education system in Japan, which requires students to learn to write with a calligraphy brush, with their work being assessed on how neatly they write. Many people educated in Japan see this as the epitome of calligraphy. However, calligraphy originally included elements that transcended language, such as the modulation of the brushstrokes, the sense of rhythm, and the freedom with which characters are arranged on the paper. The writer’s “breath,” which is lost in printed text, was once present in the characters themselves.

These elements are present in rinsho, which is a way of studying classic calligraphy. Although those studying calligraphy will each approach rinsho differently, it is certainly more than just copying the forms of great classic calligraphy—by learning the pace of the brushwork, the modulation, the sense of rhythm, and how to use one’s body to make these possible, one draws closer to the original calligrapher’s mental state. Perhaps rinsho is the exploration of the vitality that fills a classic work, by transcending time and space to approach the mind and body of the calligrapher.

Although it may not be apparent in Yu-ichi’s calligraphic style, which has a clumsy quality that is part of its appeal, Yu-ichi respected the practice of rinsho, and said that it is important that the feelings that emerge when looking at a classic work overlap with the work itself. Looking at the exhibition title with this in mind, it seems that Yu-ichi aimed to convey emotion and a sense of life in his rinsho as well, and described his dissatisfaction with his attempts as “terrible.”

Yu-ichi’s outlook may have been influenced by his experience of war in his youth. Yu-ichi was a schoolteacher and survived a near-death experience during the bombing of Tokyo in 1945. On special display in the exhibition is Ah Yokokawa Kokumin-gakkō, in which he describes the destruction he saw: a city reduced to ashes, and people who were alive a day prior turned to “blackened corpses,” “skeletal remains,” “naked woman burned alive disemboweled fetus exposed.” Having narrowly escaped death, but having witnessed such devastation, Yu-ichi must have been left with many reflections on life, including its preciousness and rarity, and the pain of being a survivor. Although the work was made in 1978, its intensity suggests that the experiences of his youth remained, having never faded away.

As we have shifted from handwriting to printing, and from printing to the web, handwriting is no longer a prominent part of our daily lives, and the physical aspect of text has been lost. We even have fewer and fewer opportunities to use our bodies in our everyday lives. In our present-day context, Yu-ichi’s work seems to attempt to awaken our fading physical senses and convey to us the brilliance of the body and life.

（Collaborative Researcher at the Research Institute for Promoting Intercultural Studies, Kobe University）