Back in 習字 lessons!

We haven't had shuuji lessons in a while; 先生 went back to Japan to visit, and in the time since her return our schedules have all been weird. But last Saturday we finally got back to it! We started a new poem for 散らし chirashi style, in hiragana and hentaigana—

はこねじを わがこえくれば 伊豆の海や 沖の小島に 波寄る見ゆ

はこねぢをわがこえくれば
いづのうみや おきのこじまに なみのよるみゆ

Hakoneji o waga koekureba
Izu no umi ya Oki no kojima ni
nami no yoru miyu

It's by Sanetomo MINAMOTO (源実朝—though I am lame enough to read his name as jitsu-asa), who lived (1192–1219) and reigned (1203–1219) in the Kamakura period and whose image appears at right. Seems he turned to poetry because his mother's father kept trying to bully him off the throne. (Reminder to self: track down Hyakunin Isshu.) That he didn't make it past 26 suggests he wasn't living in very safe times. Get this:

Under heavy snow on the evening of February 12, 1219 (Jōkyū 1, 26th day of the 1st month), Sanetomo was coming down from the Senior Shrine at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū after assisting to a ceremony celebrating his nomination to Udaijin. His nephew (the son of second shogun Minamoto no Yoriie) Kugyō (Minamoto no Yoshinari) came out from next to the stone stairway of the shrine, then suddenly attacked and assassinated him. For his act he was himself beheaded few hours later, thus bringing the Seiwa Genji line of the Minamoto clan and their rule in Kamakura to a sudden end.

source

Heavy. Here's a pic of the stairway to the Senior Shrine. Apparently the thousand-year-old ginkgo at left fell in a storm in 2010.

Last time we practiced the text up to や.

We're also working on five-character 行書 gyousho. My text is about opening windows/rafters and feeling slight coolness: 開軒納微涼. We practiced writing on long paper, on the floor; I settled on the paper in seiza, as if I were about to serve tea, but in fact the thing is to straddle the paper and slide the suzuri down as you go.

I mentioned that I'd asked 日本語の先生 about the origin of the kanji for mu (無), and 習字の先生 looked it up in 漢字語源, a book of kanji "etymology" (at least, origins). The book said mu was about storing things in kimono sleeves; that certainly works with the crying-face kanji—so symmetrical and with a definite feeling of hanging and swaying—but doesn't accord with Henshall's or 日本語の先生's explanation. Henshall says it's "of somewhat confused and obscure etymology"—a dancer with tasseled sleeves, with the four 点 meaning not fire, but actually "cease to be / die" (with an illustration that looks like 七 and probably, given "shichi"/"nana"/"shinu", is either exactly that or something close). The rest of his explanation is about confusing intermediate forms, and he lands on thinking of the grid part of 無 as a sheaf of wheat. I like 日本語の先生's explanation better: he explained it as person (hitoyane), barrel, and fire—so 無 is the feeling you get when you sink into a bath. (It came up as 習字の先生 was telling us about a visit to an 温泉 onsen, a hot spring.) The sleeve explanation certainly helps, but I can also see turning the "sleeve" version into the standard version if you just straighten out the curved bits.