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The Art of Japanese Calligraphy In the west, calligraphy is generally associated with penmanship, and is thought of as the art of writting neatly. In China and Japan, because of the flexibility of the materials used and the graphic possibilities inherent in the scripts, calligraphy has attained the status of an important art.
The Japanese language has imported chinese characters called "Kanji", and the writting system uses these in combination with phonetic symbols called "Kana". Like Chinese, Japanese is written in vertical lines from right to left.
The art of Japanese calligraphy, or "Shodo", is the art of writing Japanese characters with brush and ink
The three basic calligraphic styles are "Kaisho"(block or standard style), and "sosho"(cursive style); all appeared before the end of the sixth century. École Calligraphie Japonaise de Montreal |
