書道テレビ (Shodou TV)。

「書道テレビ」というインタネットテレビ局　(Shodou TV) starts June 1!

the channel is here

more about the project here

楽しみにしています。。。。　

さりげなく。

習字の先生　also taught me a new word—that is, she used it to describe one of my strokes in tensho and, when I asked what it meant, suggested I ask 日本語の先生 about it. The word was さりげなく, which seems to mean that I wasn't paying enough attention to the ending of my stroke. That sounds like me; I tend to keep thinking about the next stroke, rather than "being in the moment" with the stroke I'm actually doing. (One of the many reasons why studying shuuji is good for me.)

さりげ contains two kanji, first 然る and then 気. 然り気ない、然り気無い、然り気無く。 The dictionaries translate it as "nonchalant(ly)". Unconcerned; in a casual manner. I admit I sometimes become impatient when kanji have many strokes. Kaisho is like that; sometimes I dread even starting a page of characters, because it'll be dozens of strokes before I've finished, each presenting a fresh opportunity for total failure. In most examples of 鳥 in tensho there are multiple "feathers" that descend from the right side in parallel—nowhere near as dynamic as sousho or even kaisho! But not being 然り気無い is something I need to work on, like not rushing my strokes.

(I wondered where I'd seen 然. Probably in 全然! Zen-zen is like "not at all", the first kanji being "everything" and the second, さる, being something like "-like".)

今日の習字： 連綿体、変体仮名、篆書。 (Calligraphy!)

Today's shuuji (習字) lesson was 連綿体 (renmentai, connected kana) ふる、さと、はな、ひと. ひと took me the longest, especially the line from the pickup after ひ to the cross in と. Then 変体仮名 (hentaigana), several forms of わ, one of which is actually based on 王, which apparently is something like わん in Chinese. My favorite was a form based on 倭; I feel extra lucky because we got to do 麦 mugi twice, once as 偏 (in 和) and once in the upper part of 旁 (in 倭). それから篆書, seal script, our first attempts. We "interviewed" several forms of 寒 and 鳥, and then I gave it a shot—very different from kaisho and gyousho, in that sometimes the best we can do is try to reproduce examples from the old masters, without necessarily knowing the stroke order or even, sometimes, the stroke count. The good side of that is that there's some freedom in it.

My 小筆 kofude was good to me today and gave me pretty clean lines in hentaigana, as long as I kept the ink thick. It responded well to renmen, too, though because the bristles aren't starched it can be difficult to maneuver. I used a larger sheep-bristle fude for tensho and had trouble sometimes achieving the stroke entrances and symmetry I wanted.

Whenever we're looking for examples of things, 先生 brings out amazing books, full of calligraphy by ancient and modern masters. Today it recalled a discussion I'd had with 日本語の先生 about honorifics with nouns—when is the teacher's book ご本 vs just plain old 本? If sensei actually wrote the book, it may be go-hon; if it's just a book that sensei happens to have, then maybe just hon. But everything is situational, and sensei's books today definitely felt like ご本, full of examples of skill that should be respected, especially since 先生の自分の先生 was in them.

日本人の「チュイート」で日本語を学ぼう。。。。

今日は会社の仕事が沢山あったけど、スパ・ヅパつまらなかったので、僕は出来るだけ日本語を練習した。まず少し朝日新聞を読んでみたが、新聞がちょっと読みにくくて、読む時間がかかりすぎたから、諦めちゃった。捨てちゃった。それからチュイッターのサイトに行って、面白い日本語のチュイットをキ・ワードで探して読んでみた。木・ワードは「習字」や「小筆」や「天気」や「名言」など。　チュイットのテキストはいつも短いし、読むことがもっと易しいと思った。凄かった。

習字。。。。　先回（土）は小筆を使って連綿のひらがなの「まつ」、「とし」、「かぜ」、「うち」と変体仮名の「る」を学んで練習した。それから、筆で「寒鳥喧」の草書を書いてみた。僕の書いた文字はたいてい多きすりう、たいてい小さすぎる。本当に上手じゃないが、沢山練習と、そろそろ、いつか。。。。　今度は、添書を始めると思う。それに、すぐ小筆で「連綿」で俳句を書いてみると思う。僕の選んだ俳句は一茶が書いたのだ：　「山寺や・雪の底なる・鐘の声」。冬のことみたいので、早く初めたほうがいいと思う！ レッスンはいつものように楽しかった。先生のおアパートは高い階（？）にあるので、窓から沢山見える。雪や町や晩の光など、すごくきれいだと思った。

今日の習字. (today's calligraphy!)

Today we "finished" the iroha—that is, we began studying the last six hiragana characters. 先生 gave us hentaigana to look at for next time, and some examples of 連綿 renmen, connecting kana into continuous lines. Just two characters at a time so far, more as we gain in skill. 今度ね。

We took a break from my new 晝陰靜 hiru in sei to do two characters from the last set, 雲 kumo and 飛 to(bu), in new sousho styles on white paper. 先生 and I picked out some favorites from the Masters; I wrote 雲 in the style of 吳昌碩 and 飛 in the amazingly tight and blotchy style of someone whose name I can't make out at all. I also tried this really daunting 飛 by (I think) 楊維—

It can be tough to sound out the name of a Chinese calligrapher. In 吳昌碩, 昌碩 may be shouseki; 吳 seems not to live in Japanese, beyond the name of a harbor near Hiroshima, but may be.... Scratch that. I'm going to go full-on Chinese with it and say his PinYin name is WU Chang-Shi or WU Chiang-Shuo or something else along those lines. And...やった！ *rah* It is. So now I'm savvy enough to figure out that 楊維楨 is YANG Wei-Chen—not this one, but this one—from the Yuan Dynasty, 14th century. Funny, because apparently Wu lived 1844–1927. But I guess variety helps. 先生 says it's good to practice from calligraphers who wrote during the Tang dynasty (7th to 10th centuries) because their work tends to be the least idiosyncratic / the most standardized.

(Ha—this site of the National Palace Museum refers to Yang's "wild cursive script" that "mirrors in many ways the troubled times of the late Yuan dynasty". I guess his 飛 does, too. 先生 wasn't into that 飛 but said I could try if I wanted to, so in some down-time I did. I think I see the logic of the movement, but I couldn't make it look coherent as Yang's does. The thing is, he connects everything and keeps all the lines thin, so his 飛 comes out looking like a Picasso. This history of Chinese calligraphy actually quotes Yang.)

The Unknown Master's 飛 is certainly strong. It enters very lightly but coils the first hook-and-dots into a tight little ball and then condenses the vertical and the swipes into a seriously thick descending line. The second hook also is heavy, but at the end of the low stroke it suddenly lightens and trails up to a powerful ending 点. For me, the last hook stroke in this sousho is difficult because I enjoy it so much: often I drew it out along the bottom and pulled in on the upstroke, as I like to do, and I ended up with something more like 龍 ryuu, dragon. And then one time, somehow, it read as 兎 usagi, a bunny rabbit. 不思議なものだね。

As for 雲: after 先生 corrects, I usually rewrite the page a few times, so of course the 漢字 get darker and darker. Seeing a 雲 on the trash pile, 先生 had the inspired idea to "darken" my 雲—why shouldn't we do it as a storm cloud, with a really bold entrance? So I started doing it that way, with a ton of ink in the opening strokes (雨) and then a subtle trailing-off afterward. Cool effect—total 滲み at the top and then neat 掠れ at the end. 楽し過ぎてやばい！

Once when we were all looking through a book of 書, 先生 pointed out a kanji written along the edge of some examples that meant "in the style of". She read it as リン rin. Wondering what that might be. Per Saiga, there are a few decent candidates, but the best so far is probably 随, which means "following". 僕の一番好きな「飛」は、知らないマスター随だよ。

ところで：　I like it when kanji are their own radical. There's something impressive about it—like they're so unique that there's no comfortable way to categorize them with anything else. You go, 飛.

今日の習字. (today's calligraphy!)

「景雲飛」の草書を終わって、先生の漢字練習の本を相談して、新しい漢字を選んだ：

晝陰静 ヒルインセイ　hiru-in-sei

晝: 昔の「昼」, old form of hiru, afternoon
陰: kage, shade*
靜: 昔の「静」, old form of shizuka, quiet/still

先生 let me choose from quite a few options, and this one seemed a nice choice for summer and also contains kanji I'd like to be better acquainted with: hiru is basically 書 kaku, and you can never practice that enough; kage is the same kage as in my blog-name; shizuka is a kanji I don't know that's worth knowing and will be a lot of fun to write and hang up at work. 今日その楷書を学び始めた。角や太さやスピードやバランシングなどは難しいおで、今度の前にたくさん練習しておかなくちゃね。

*There's an old form with kusakanmuri (蔭) that I like because it feels greener, but funnily enough the book uses the new form.

面白い書道のブログ。

http://blog.livedoor.jp/shuukatsu55/

例えがたくさんある。

抜群 (batsugun)。

Learned a neat new word today from 習字の先生： 抜群, batsugun. 先生 translated it as "outside the flock/pack"—羊 is hitsuji, "sheep"—and she says it's used pretty often in Japan.

Today we reviewed kana る　の　お　く　や　ま　and moved on to け　ふ　く　え　て　あ. Then kanji: I'm still working on 景雲飛 in sousho (草書).　C——さん is working on 亀龍壽, which I think must be much trickier than my 景雲飛.

今日の漢字: Kanji: 連 (れん、ren)

Exploring 連 (ren) today. It's about continuity, carrying along. Pretty soon in shuuji we'll start learning renmen 連綿, the style of connecting hiragana written with kofude into continuous lines. (綿 is actually わた, cotton.) The 部首 (radicals) are しんにゅう (shinnyuu) again and 車, kuruma, a vehicle, so a (continuously) moving vehicle. Ren. Lots of compounds involving 連 are about alliance or continuity:

- 連濁 れんだく rendaku, voicing the initial consonant of a word when it's used in a compound

- 連合 れんごう rengou, an alliance or union

- 連続 れんぞく renzoku, continuously, consecutively (続 being 続ける　つずける tsuzukeru, to continue doing) (変: although this is adverbial and ends in く, the く seems integral to the 音読み reading, so I assume usage would be 連続に.)

- 関連 かんれん kanren, relevance/connection, both kanji reinforcing

- 連絡　れんらく renraku, contacting (連絡する)

- 国連 こくれん kokuren, the United Nations (国 being a country)

連 seems usually to be read as れん (ren), but it also can be つら (tsura), as in 連ねる (to link or join) and 連れる (つれる、to take/lead someone). The つら uses are sometimes doubled by the kanji 列, also レン, as in 列なる, つらなる, to extend / stretch out. Hmm.

面白い: Per Kotoba, 連 also was a title of high nobility, むらじ (muraji).

Next up will be 残, as in both 残業 and 残念. 面白い漢字だね。

今日の一番好きな言葉。

飛ばされる, tobasareru. Saw it in the Murray book; he defines it as to be blown away. To・bu (飛ぶ), flying, is a kanji I'm working on in shuuji. It's the third down in the image at right. (The others are kei and un/kumo; 景雲飛 is a group of three that I've been doing, though so far only in kaisho.)

The plethora of syllables in tobasareru makes me think that maybe this is tobu being wrung through a tense or two that I haven't learned yet. Something causative or passive or causative-passive. I've tried manipulating tobu into something that might work, but so far no luck. There's a passive feel to it, like suru/sareru, that suggests being an unwilling participant in flight.

That's something I don't yet understand well, like wataru vs watasu or okiru and okosu—the -ru form meaning acting for oneself and the -su form meaning acting upon someone else. I feel that there's a pattern there that I'll be really glad to know about once I do.

So, I guess,
橋を渡る, cross bridge
橋が渡れる, bridge can be crossed
橋が渡られる, bridge is crossed
橋を渡す, be conveyed across bridge

渡られる, be crossed, 渡す, be carried across

Now I'm confused, because a page I was just reading about the passive form says that you can passivize ichidan verbs by changing the final u to a and adding -reru. But doesn't that create the potential form? Eg, 食べる / 食べられる—am I saying that a thing is edible or that it's eaten (by some unspecified agent)?

Hmm.

面白い漢字の点の書き方。 (Interesting shodou.)

右の漢字：　遊、楽
中の：　花、心、愉
左の：　咲、頑？

だれが買いたか分からないけど。　Interesting way of forming dots (点). If that's 頑, どうしてんでしょうかな。　

Loving this one:

サイトによると「命名書」と言うことなんだ。僕はまあまあに読めるけど、実は分からない。

今日の習字のレッソンで伊呂波の勉強した仮名。

今日、小筆を使ってこの仮名を書いてみた：

と　ち　り　ぬ　る　を
わ　か　よ　た　れ　そ

僕のラインは大抵太過ぎる。小筆を使って書くのが難しいと思う。

At shuuji lesson today, we continued with kofude (小筆) and kana in the old Iroha order: i ro ha ni ho e.

We reviewed to chi ri nu ru wo and moved on to wa ka yo ta re so. Beautiful kana.