{"id":6745,"date":"2017-03-31T23:39:26","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T14:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/?p=6745"},"modified":"2017-03-31T23:39:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T14:39:26","slug":"alan-cheng-calligraphy-shodo-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/2017\/03\/31\/alan-cheng-calligraphy-shodo-lessons","title":{"rendered":"Alan Cheng: Calligraphy (Shod\u014d) Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"
This semester I continued taking calligraphy lessons with an instructor in my neighborhood, who I was fortunate to have been introduced to by my host mother. Every Tuesday from 7 to 9pm, I practiced writing Japanese characters with an ink and brush along with two other students.<\/div>\n
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As a college student, how you fit in within the demographics of students who take calligraphy lessons is quite interesting: either you find yourself sticking out as the oldest among a crowd of elementary school students, or you’re conspicuously the youngest among adults over twice your age. (To be fair, as a foreigner, you pretty much stick out wherever you are but that’s beside the point!)\u00a0The reason for this is that students who pursue calligraphy as an extracurricular activity typically practice in clubs at school, rather than taking outside lessons, and working folks, of course, hardly have time to take these kinds of lessons.<\/p>\n

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My class was the latter, and the two other students were both in their 50’s or 60’s (I never asked directly) and at least one of them was a grandparent. Since they’ve both been practicing calligraphy for at least 8 years, their writing already looked perfect in my eyes, so at first I wondered why they were still taking classes. However, it didn’t take long for me to come across the answer: these lessons were also important social gatherings. The students and our instructor always chatted about anything and everything while during our lessons, and the atmosphere was always very warm and friendly. I could tell that, while the student-teacher relationships were always upheld (by the way they were speaking), they were truly friends as well.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the teacher, too, had grandchildren, and it seemed that she would give them handwriting exercises to work on–as the classes were held in her home, I recall that occasionally her young grandchildren would come into the classroom to have their handwriting looked over. That my calligraphy teacher was keen to make sure that her grandchildren had good handwriting even at such a young age, I believe, reflects the importance placed on handwriting in modern society, where, for instance, resumes are still traditionally handwritten and applicants with messy handwriting are indeed judged to also have a looser character.<\/p>\n
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Comparing the cultural emphasis on handwriting in Japan to two other countries that I’m familiar with, there’s a similar attitude in China, but America doesn’t value handwriting as highly. My dad, an immigrant from China, was very proud of his handwriting and calligraphy, but he realized that these skills are not nearly as important in America, so unlike my calligraphy instructor, he didn’t feel the need to comb over my handwriting as a child.<\/p>\n

As for advice to incoming KCJS students who are unsure about what to choose for their CIP, I would definitely recommend calligraphy as a CIP activity for those who are interested. One of the hurdles for anyone starting to learn calligraphy that ends up turning many people off the art is embarrassment. It can be embarrassing to struggle\u00a0writing even simple Japanese characters as beautifully as the samples you’re given, especially since you’ve been writing Japanese for years, not to mention that the instructor will say that your writing is \u4e0a\u624b seemingly without regard to how poor it is. However, it’s important to realize that calligraphy is difficult even to native Japanese folks, and, practicing the traditional art of calligraphy can have wonderful effects for your handwriting in general.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This semester I continued taking calligraphy lessons with an instructor in my neighborhood, who I was fortunat … \u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080 →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_locale":"ja","_original_post":"6745"},"categories":[47,131,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}