I have begun taking shodo classes recently. Every Friday afternoon at 5pm, I ride my bike along the Nagao river for five minutes before turning left at the bright orange house. A teacher from my school first brought me to Matsunaga-san's house, he said, "Please ride your bike along the river for five minutes, and when you see the orange house, please turn left, her house is the one with the old boat in front of it." At the time it had all seemed so easy, that I found his explanation almost comical. And yet, every time I ride to Matsunaga's house, I have the impression that I am lost. That part of Yukuhashi rapidly becomes a bland industrial monochrome if you don't turn along the river, but there are a few rivers in Yukuhashi, and every time I am certain that I have turned along the wrong river. The river drifts away and I am in a neighborhood, fairly certain that none of these brown and grey houses with tiled roofs look familiar. I retrace that teacher's words in my head, "at the orange house, please turn left," and I wait a little bit. And sure enough, a house the color of a mandarin orange, with a sharp grey tiled roof, with shiny new tiles, and shiny black trim on the window sills appears. Compared with the surrounding houses, it looks flashy, like the only woman who showed up to church wearing a sparkly number. I am thankful every time she appears, and make the first left just after.
Matsunaga-san is a Japanese woman in her seventies, I'd say. She always wears a black apron that looks worn with time, but never dirty. She insists that everyone call her obachan, or grandmother, and one time I called her ogachan, she corrected me with a voice that neither concerned nor impatient. One time I rang the doorbell and waited for Obachan to answer, and when she came to the door, wiping ink on her apron, she told me to not ring the bell, just to enter. This is unusual for a Japanese household, and I was momentarily embarassed and glad about her request.
The class isn't really a class by the strict sense of the word. It is an informal gathering of students who go to Obachan to learn this frequently forgotten traditional Japanese art. I am the only foreigner who attends Obachan's informal classes, and I am also the only student older than twelve.
Obachan's house is not remarkable in any way, except for that the room where she holds the shodo classes is a real mess. The floor of what was a tatami room has been covered in an army green carpet reminiscent of a depressing seventies movie, and the walls are covered in thin plastic sheets covered with drawings of cartoon faces, scribble marks, and kanji characters. The floor is covered with scraps of newspaper, bags of used rice paper, pencils, scrap materials, notebooks, fresh sheets of rice paper, and books. In the room, there are several low tables where students kneel and begin by drawing large circles on sheets of practice paper, and continue to paint their shodo as instructed by Obachan. The mess is comforting. It reminds me that this is a place of creation where the typical rules of order both apply and do not apply simultaneously. It is an organized mess. The papers on the floor are neatly piled, and the bags filled with old practice paintings are stacked neatly and folded into the bags. The carpet comes up at the edges as it is untraditional of a Japanaese tatami room to contain carpet and it is not nailed in anywhere; it must have been scrap that she had attained for the purpose of protecting her tatami floors. The plastic over the walls was for the same purpose. It is a perfectly functional, a perfectly practical mess.
Upon entering, I always greet Obachan with thanks for having me, and remove my coat as the room is always warm. The young students with whom I practice steal glances at me as I settle into the table that feels too small, trying to fold my legs beneath me as delicately as possible. We begin by drawing sweeping circles on scrap paper and move into practicing basic strokes with brush and ink. When it comes time for Obachan to "assign" me something to write, she stops for a moment to think about which is best. I know she is trying to think of kanji that is not too difficult, as well, as something that may have meaning for me. Her face is flat and smooth, and she smiles in a refined way that reflects a steady and warm quality about her. She is firm in her speech, but never harsh, and she makes patient corrections on my work.
The stroke is the most difficult part of shodo. A true shodo master, like Obachan, keeps her elbow raised to a perfet degree as she paints, her strokes stop, for three seconds, she changes the position of her elbow to account for a change in direction of the next stroke, without lifting the brush. The result is a beautiful line that thickens and thins in the right places with balance and beauty. Even in imitating the exact motion of the brush, and the exact angle of the elbow, I am entirely unable to write as beautifully as she. Anyone who pracitces shodo will tell you that is in never about writing the characters, but rather it is about feeling them. There is such great attention to form, and to conscious placement of both brush and stroke, that I often feel too scattered to grasp the concept.
In my last class, Obachan told me that she and the students are excited for when I come, because they are interested in me. In Japanese she says, "We wait for you." I know she means that they look forward to seeing me, but the simple phrase and it's direct form strikes me. The students usually watch with curiosity as I try my best to maintain focus and follow as I am told and I paint. I sometimes feel like I must frown a great deal when I look at my finished work, or as I am trying to reproduce what Obachan has done as an example for me and my lines look nothing like hers.
When Obachan writes, or paints, she announces to all the students, "Obachan kakimasu," "Obachan is writing," a gentle reminder to not bother her then. As she writes, most of the students crowd around to watch her at her craft. She will write the kanji character for me in a bright orange paint that I will then use as an example for my own work. If she is unhappy with her result, she will discard the paper and begin again. After I am finished poorly replicating the charcter, Obachan will look over it, and mark her happy orange paint the places where my line is too fat, too thin, crooked, too long, or without a big enough drag mark. If it is good, she will draw a large, orange spiral over the character.
The rice paper is thin and I like the sound of it crinkling. The ink smells musty and it is made by rubbing a solid block of what looks like coal around in a pool of water. Obachan tells me I must do this for ten minutes. I cannot tell if it is meant to instill a sense of patience or if it takes that long to make the ink.
The children in my lesson are all elementary school students who lean over my work and glance shyly in my direction. I have not been attending classes that long, so they are still interested and a little scared by me. After a few minutes of me being there, they usually stop looking, and I invite their help by asking how to prepare the ink, or fold the paper into neat lines, and I look at their writing to see how mine may look if I did this for years. Some of them are not shy at all, and they often listen as Obachan explains things to me in Japanese, and help to translate if they can. Small words become a great service between all of us, and I am reminded of how little it takes to help one another.
I always leave shodo feeling like I have accomplished something and nothing at the same time. Thinking of how Obachan writes, I realize that I will never be as good as she is, and I am only witnessing a small fraction of what the whole things means. I enjoy going though, and am grateful for her and those students and that wonderfully organized mess in the house with the boat out front kitty corner to the bright orange house on the road by the river.
Matsunaga-san is a Japanese woman in her seventies, I'd say. She always wears a black apron that looks worn with time, but never dirty. She insists that everyone call her obachan, or grandmother, and one time I called her ogachan, she corrected me with a voice that neither concerned nor impatient. One time I rang the doorbell and waited for Obachan to answer, and when she came to the door, wiping ink on her apron, she told me to not ring the bell, just to enter. This is unusual for a Japanese household, and I was momentarily embarassed and glad about her request.
The class isn't really a class by the strict sense of the word. It is an informal gathering of students who go to Obachan to learn this frequently forgotten traditional Japanese art. I am the only foreigner who attends Obachan's informal classes, and I am also the only student older than twelve.
Obachan's house is not remarkable in any way, except for that the room where she holds the shodo classes is a real mess. The floor of what was a tatami room has been covered in an army green carpet reminiscent of a depressing seventies movie, and the walls are covered in thin plastic sheets covered with drawings of cartoon faces, scribble marks, and kanji characters. The floor is covered with scraps of newspaper, bags of used rice paper, pencils, scrap materials, notebooks, fresh sheets of rice paper, and books. In the room, there are several low tables where students kneel and begin by drawing large circles on sheets of practice paper, and continue to paint their shodo as instructed by Obachan. The mess is comforting. It reminds me that this is a place of creation where the typical rules of order both apply and do not apply simultaneously. It is an organized mess. The papers on the floor are neatly piled, and the bags filled with old practice paintings are stacked neatly and folded into the bags. The carpet comes up at the edges as it is untraditional of a Japanaese tatami room to contain carpet and it is not nailed in anywhere; it must have been scrap that she had attained for the purpose of protecting her tatami floors. The plastic over the walls was for the same purpose. It is a perfectly functional, a perfectly practical mess.
Upon entering, I always greet Obachan with thanks for having me, and remove my coat as the room is always warm. The young students with whom I practice steal glances at me as I settle into the table that feels too small, trying to fold my legs beneath me as delicately as possible. We begin by drawing sweeping circles on scrap paper and move into practicing basic strokes with brush and ink. When it comes time for Obachan to "assign" me something to write, she stops for a moment to think about which is best. I know she is trying to think of kanji that is not too difficult, as well, as something that may have meaning for me. Her face is flat and smooth, and she smiles in a refined way that reflects a steady and warm quality about her. She is firm in her speech, but never harsh, and she makes patient corrections on my work.
The stroke is the most difficult part of shodo. A true shodo master, like Obachan, keeps her elbow raised to a perfet degree as she paints, her strokes stop, for three seconds, she changes the position of her elbow to account for a change in direction of the next stroke, without lifting the brush. The result is a beautiful line that thickens and thins in the right places with balance and beauty. Even in imitating the exact motion of the brush, and the exact angle of the elbow, I am entirely unable to write as beautifully as she. Anyone who pracitces shodo will tell you that is in never about writing the characters, but rather it is about feeling them. There is such great attention to form, and to conscious placement of both brush and stroke, that I often feel too scattered to grasp the concept.
In my last class, Obachan told me that she and the students are excited for when I come, because they are interested in me. In Japanese she says, "We wait for you." I know she means that they look forward to seeing me, but the simple phrase and it's direct form strikes me. The students usually watch with curiosity as I try my best to maintain focus and follow as I am told and I paint. I sometimes feel like I must frown a great deal when I look at my finished work, or as I am trying to reproduce what Obachan has done as an example for me and my lines look nothing like hers.
When Obachan writes, or paints, she announces to all the students, "Obachan kakimasu," "Obachan is writing," a gentle reminder to not bother her then. As she writes, most of the students crowd around to watch her at her craft. She will write the kanji character for me in a bright orange paint that I will then use as an example for my own work. If she is unhappy with her result, she will discard the paper and begin again. After I am finished poorly replicating the charcter, Obachan will look over it, and mark her happy orange paint the places where my line is too fat, too thin, crooked, too long, or without a big enough drag mark. If it is good, she will draw a large, orange spiral over the character.
The rice paper is thin and I like the sound of it crinkling. The ink smells musty and it is made by rubbing a solid block of what looks like coal around in a pool of water. Obachan tells me I must do this for ten minutes. I cannot tell if it is meant to instill a sense of patience or if it takes that long to make the ink.
The children in my lesson are all elementary school students who lean over my work and glance shyly in my direction. I have not been attending classes that long, so they are still interested and a little scared by me. After a few minutes of me being there, they usually stop looking, and I invite their help by asking how to prepare the ink, or fold the paper into neat lines, and I look at their writing to see how mine may look if I did this for years. Some of them are not shy at all, and they often listen as Obachan explains things to me in Japanese, and help to translate if they can. Small words become a great service between all of us, and I am reminded of how little it takes to help one another.
I always leave shodo feeling like I have accomplished something and nothing at the same time. Thinking of how Obachan writes, I realize that I will never be as good as she is, and I am only witnessing a small fraction of what the whole things means. I enjoy going though, and am grateful for her and those students and that wonderfully organized mess in the house with the boat out front kitty corner to the bright orange house on the road by the river.
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| Obachan's house |
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| One of the many rivers near Obachan's House |
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