father loved calligraphy, and frequently put hanging scrolls of calligraphy on display in the tokonoma alcove of our house. Only very rarely did he put up paintings. The scrolls he usually hung were either ink rubbings of inscribed stone monuments from China or characters written by his Chinese acquaintances.
I still recall a particular antique rubbing of a gravestone from Hanshan Temple. Here and there the characters had been broken or chiseled off the stone, and there were blank spaces in the middle of some sentences. My father would fill in the missing words, and in this way he taught me the poem “A Night Spent by the Maple Bridge” by the Chinese poet Chang Chi of the T’ang Dynasty.
Even now I can recite this poem off the top of my head, and I can write it with a brush just as easily. Some years ago I attended a gathering at a Japanese-style restaurant where this same poem by ChangChi, written in an overly graceful hand, was hanging as a scroll in the art alcove. Without really thinking about it, I quickly read it aloud. The actor Kayama Yŭzō overheard me, and staring in wonder said, “Master, your accomplishments amaze me.”
It’s no wonder that Kayama should have been impressed. Reading the script for
Sanjurō
aloud, he had a line that was to be “Wait behind the stable.” Mistaking “stable” for another character with the same radical, he read it, “Wait behind the outhouse.” Nevertheless I gave him a major role in this 1962 film and used him again later in
Red Beard
(1965). But now I must tell the truth, and the fact is that I could read that poem only because it was from Hanshan Temple. Presented with any other Chinese poem, I would have simply stammered. Of another Chinese poem in a hanging scroll my father liked, for example, I remember only the lines
For your sword, use the Full Moon Blue Dragon Blade
For your study, read the Tso Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals
.
This is of limited interest.
I have strayed from the subject again. The point is that I cannot understand how my father, who loved calligraphy so much, could have sent me to study with the kind of teacher he did. Perhaps it was because the teacher’s school was in our neighborhood, and because my brother had also gone there. When my father went to enroll me as a student, the teacher inquired after my brother and urged my father to send him back for more lessons. Apparently my brother had done extremely well there.
But I was unable to find anything interesting about the teacher’s calligraphy. He was indeed strict and forthright, but I found his writing without flavor or fragrance—just like printed characters in a book. I had my father’s orders, however, so I went to the school every day and, using the teacher’s calligraphy as a model, I practiced writing.
Both my father and the calligraphy teacher let their facial hair grow, as was fashionable in the Meiji era. But while my father had both a full beard and mustache in the manner of a Meiji elder statesman, the calligraphy teacher wore only a mustache, in the manner of a Meiji petty bureaucrat. He invariably sat behind a desk wearing a stern expression, as if challenging the students lined up behind their desks across from him.
Beyond him we could see the garden. Dominating the garden was a huge construction of shelves crowned by a row of bonsai miniature trees displaying the antique bends of their branches. As I looked atthem, I couldn’t help thinking how like them were these students at their desks. When a student felt he had done a good piece of writing, he would carry it up to the teacher with great trepidation. The teacher would look at it and take a brush with red ink to correct the strokes he did not like. This procedure would be repeated over and over again.
Finally, when the teacher approved the student’s writing sample, he would take out a seal I couldn’t read because it was carved in ancient seal script and stamp it in blue on the side of the
I still recall a particular antique rubbing of a gravestone from Hanshan Temple. Here and there the characters had been broken or chiseled off the stone, and there were blank spaces in the middle of some sentences. My father would fill in the missing words, and in this way he taught me the poem “A Night Spent by the Maple Bridge” by the Chinese poet Chang Chi of the T’ang Dynasty.
Even now I can recite this poem off the top of my head, and I can write it with a brush just as easily. Some years ago I attended a gathering at a Japanese-style restaurant where this same poem by ChangChi, written in an overly graceful hand, was hanging as a scroll in the art alcove. Without really thinking about it, I quickly read it aloud. The actor Kayama Yŭzō overheard me, and staring in wonder said, “Master, your accomplishments amaze me.”
It’s no wonder that Kayama should have been impressed. Reading the script for
Sanjurō
aloud, he had a line that was to be “Wait behind the stable.” Mistaking “stable” for another character with the same radical, he read it, “Wait behind the outhouse.” Nevertheless I gave him a major role in this 1962 film and used him again later in
Red Beard
(1965). But now I must tell the truth, and the fact is that I could read that poem only because it was from Hanshan Temple. Presented with any other Chinese poem, I would have simply stammered. Of another Chinese poem in a hanging scroll my father liked, for example, I remember only the lines
For your sword, use the Full Moon Blue Dragon Blade
For your study, read the Tso Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals
.
This is of limited interest.
I have strayed from the subject again. The point is that I cannot understand how my father, who loved calligraphy so much, could have sent me to study with the kind of teacher he did. Perhaps it was because the teacher’s school was in our neighborhood, and because my brother had also gone there. When my father went to enroll me as a student, the teacher inquired after my brother and urged my father to send him back for more lessons. Apparently my brother had done extremely well there.
But I was unable to find anything interesting about the teacher’s calligraphy. He was indeed strict and forthright, but I found his writing without flavor or fragrance—just like printed characters in a book. I had my father’s orders, however, so I went to the school every day and, using the teacher’s calligraphy as a model, I practiced writing.
Both my father and the calligraphy teacher let their facial hair grow, as was fashionable in the Meiji era. But while my father had both a full beard and mustache in the manner of a Meiji elder statesman, the calligraphy teacher wore only a mustache, in the manner of a Meiji petty bureaucrat. He invariably sat behind a desk wearing a stern expression, as if challenging the students lined up behind their desks across from him.
Beyond him we could see the garden. Dominating the garden was a huge construction of shelves crowned by a row of bonsai miniature trees displaying the antique bends of their branches. As I looked atthem, I couldn’t help thinking how like them were these students at their desks. When a student felt he had done a good piece of writing, he would carry it up to the teacher with great trepidation. The teacher would look at it and take a brush with red ink to correct the strokes he did not like. This procedure would be repeated over and over again.
Finally, when the teacher approved the student’s writing sample, he would take out a seal I couldn’t read because it was carved in ancient seal script and stamp it in blue on the side of the
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