_valerian

Yesterday Kelly-sensei and I met our High School Shodo (Calligraphy) teacher at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Musuem in Ueno for a guided tour of the 53rd Annual Dokuritsu Sho Exhibition . The panorama above is one small view of one floor. to the left all along down the hall are sub-rooms, three sided and filled wall to ceiling with calligraphy. The sheer size of this exhibition cannot be fully expressed with four little grainy cell phone camera photos. Around the corner to to the right is another hall with more rooms of Shodo. This was one of three floors of the exhibition in one museum . There was another show at the Ueno Royal Museum nearby (two more floors) that we saw as well. The largest works were about 15 feet tall and 20 feet wide. The brush (fude) used to make them is about 4 feet high. The works in the photo above are no less than 2 feet wide (the narrow ones) and maybe six feet tall (the tall ones).

here are some people for scale:

As is the case with seeing large exhibitions of great art, you can get worn out rather easily. Works that could be the center point of a home or temple are passed over with out even a second glance. 疲れちゃった。本当にそんなにあった。
Miyazaki sensei, our teacher, also exhibited his work. He won’t admit it but in the Shodo community he seems to be well known, with other members constantly coming to him bowing and thanking him for attending yesterday. Afterwards he took me to a Shodo store in Shinokubo near Shinjuku. Next week I am going to make my own hanko stamp.

In a similar vein, kanji is quite popular in Ameirca now. Want a tattoo of a mystical oriental character? Nothing says COOL like 気違い　”freak” in Japanese on the back of your neck when you are in line at McDonalds in front of me in Nebraska.　 There are pleanty of websites offering to help you find the chinese character that express your unique and or bad-ass personality. Maybe if you are lucky though you can get your kanji tattoo featured on THIS AWESOME SITE. Good Luck!