Is calligraphy exclusive to Chinese characters? As a unique art form, calligraphy has a history of thousands of years, is a form of artistic expression based on the beauty of words, but not only Chinese calligraphy, in some countries and regions deeply influenced by Chinese culture, calligraphy art is also popular.
For example, Arabic calligraphy, Mongolian calligraphy and English calligraphy, just like after Vietnam abolished Chinese characters, it specially invented its own country's pinyin calligraphy, and our neighbor Japan also has Japanese calligraphy "円相", Japanese kana calligraphy and other forms.
Vietnamese Pinyin calligraphy
Japan is a very good country at learning, since the Tang Dynasty in China, it has been a large-scale study of Chinese culture, even the word "Japan", are changed from the title of the Chinese emperor's book, meaning "the place where the sun rises".
Calligraphy is no exception, and now The popularity of Japan has far exceeded that of us as the home country of calligraphy, and the Global Times reporter once investigated that there are 20 or 30 million calligraphy enthusiasts in Japan, which means that one in five or six people has practiced calligraphy.
Japan Law "Yen Phase"
Japanese kana calligraphy
It's just that in today's Japanese calligraphy world, calligraphy has begun to have its own unique style, especially their "modern calligraphy", which is an out-and-out "ugly book" when put in China, but it is highly sought after by Young Japanese people.
When it comes to modern Japanese calligraphy, we have to mention a Chinese calligrapher, who is known in Japan as the "father of Japanese calligraphy modernization", which is what we call "the father of modern calligraphy".
Yang Shoujing
Who is Yang Shoujing? Why does a Chinese have such a high status in the Japanese calligraphy world? He was in the same era as Qi Baishi, and he was not as famous as Qi Baishi in China, but in the Japanese painting and calligraphy world, he was a very high-status figure.
In the field of Japanese calligraphy, known as the "troika", Hinata Naruto, Iwatani Ichiroku, and Matsuda Yukiko, were all disciples of Yang Shoujing, and they were proud of it, and even after Yang Shoujing returned to China in his later years, the Japanese master calligrapher Mizuno Shumei also ran to Shanghai to find Yang Shoujing and resolutely wanted to worship him as a teacher.
Yang Shoujing's calligraphy works
Born in 1839, Yang Shoujing's relationship with Japan begins in the late Qing Dynasty, where he studied hard at a young age and was known as "the first beginner in the late Qing Dynasty".
In terms of historical geography, jinshi script and calligraphy art, he has a very high achievement, when he was 19 years old, he had the first place in five competitions, and in the first year of Tongzhi (1862), he was sent to Japan as an envoy to Japan and began his own journey to Japan.
In Japan, calligraphy is called "calligraphy", and after Yang Shoujing left at that time, it brought new opportunities to traditional Japanese calligraphy, that is, "modern calligraphy", when Japan was still learning the form of traditional calligraphy step by step, and even continued the style of the Tang Dynasty.
But Yang Shoujing's calligraphy is different, his bold and innovative calligraphy, in the Japanese calligraphy circle set off a style of calligraphy innovation, in fact, this kind of calligraphy is more in the form of artistic innovation, away from the form of traditional Chinese calligraphy, but not away from the calligraphy chapter, and the Japanese calligraphy community is in need of this fresh form of calligraphy, so that they can find their own national style in "modern calligraphy", so Yang Shoujing once became a real calligraphy master in their eyes!
However, for Japanese modern calligraphy, there have always been different voices in China, some people think that this is the "ugly book", and many people have a sense of schadenfreude, some netizens even think that this "modern calligraphy" is written so ugly, it is not calligraphy at all!
In fact, for the Japanese calligraphy community, being able to develop calligraphy into their own unique style is what they are more sought after, and Yang Shoujing's calligraphy is also the object they can imitate and pursue, and it is also the real calligraphy master in their eyes.