As a teenager, Kaoru Akagawa couldn’t read her Japanese grandmother’s letters, but she put it down to her unclear handwriting. Over a decade later, Kaoru realized her grandmother hadn’t been a poor ...

Art in Japan often comes from a philosophical standpoint, where the process is equally important as the result. This is particularly true when it comes to the Japanese calligraphy art of shodo. On the ...

The Lotus Sutra (chapters 20-23) shows an unusual variation in the thickness of the lines in an attempt to write Chinese script that mimics the fluidity of Sanskrit. The 12th-century hand scroll is on ...

Shodō—Japanese calligraphy, literally the ‘way of writing’—has been described as ‘controlled explosions on paper’. It is a sophisticated and beautiful art. Kanji, the Chinese characters drawn, combine ...

Many Japanese learners have a love/hate relationship with kanji. There are too many readings, they look too similar to other characters or are just really hard to write neatly—especially on government ...

Once the privilege of the Japanese noble women and deeply shrouded in mystery, Japan's art of calligraphy is today enjoyed by many aficionados. Hiroko Namikawa's weekly classes in Dubai have been ...

In your first interactions with Japanese culture and kanji, you may well come across the ancient art of shodo, Japanese calligraphy. Watching calligraphy masters can be almost hypnotic, with their ...

I find myself daydreaming about writing next week’s word, and that first contact the brush has with the paper A while ago, I was given a gift voucher for a craft lesson, which I decided to use for ...