Shuji (習字)

As I mentioned last week, I’ve started a new hobby – Japanese calligraphy.  Last week, I was a little bit confused about the two words used to describe this art – shodo (書道) and shuji (習字).  So I asked this week and found what I learnt to be very interesting.

The kanji 道 (dou) means ‘way’ and is used in 書道 (shodo – Japanese calligraphy or ‘the way of penmanship’), 華道 (kado – Japanese flower arranging or ‘the way of flowers’), 剣道 (kendo – a Japanese martial art or ‘the way of the sword’), 茶道 (sado – Japanese tea ceremony or ‘the way of tea’) and (I’m sure) many other traditional Japanese arts.  However, these arts have a different name for when we talk about practicing them in our daily lives (perhaps with the exception of ‘kendo’, but please correct me if I’m wrong).

書道 (shodo) = 習字 (shuji)

華道 (kado) = 生花 (ikebana) or お花 (ohana)

茶道 (sado) = お茶 (ocha)

So, from now on I will refer to my new hobby as ’shuji’, which I believe is the correct way to name it.

Today’s class was fun, although it was a little more difficult than last week.  I started out feeling great, though, as the teacher at my school got a shuji kit for me!  It was only about 2000 Yen, which I thought was pretty good.  And the lessons are only costing 1500 Yen for one hour a week, which I also think is really good.  Here’s my new shuji set:

At the top, centre, you can see the ink (すみ), and directly below this you can see a kind of charcoal (in the red box) which is also used to make the ink (this is also called すみ I think).  My teacher said, if I have lots of free time somewhen I should try making this ink.  Apparently you put some water in the tray (the next item below the red box) and then mix the charcoal with the water.  She said it takes a long time but the results can be better.  I will try it sometime!

To the left of the ink tray you can see my two brushes.  The thicker one is for writing the kanji and the thinner one is for writing my name.  The blue mat it is all laid on is a kind of pencil case believe it or not!  You roll the brushes up in it.

Today, I made my name stamp:

Sorry, it’s not a very good photo.  Hopefully you can see that it is あり (my name written in hiragana) but it’s backwards,of course, because it is a stamp!  This is made out of a normal eraser.  You just use a little tool to dig out the shape.  It’s very cool!

Today, my teacher asked again what kanji I wanted to practice.  I decided to choose 夢 (dream).  As I said last week, this is the first kanji I tried when I practiced shuji once three years ago.  I wanted to see if it would be any better this time.  I still found it pretty hard.  Let’s compare…

Here’s the one I did 3 years ago:

And here’s the best one I did today:

And here it is again (on the right) next to my teacher’s one (on the left):

I especially don’t like the three boxes part  I practiced that over and over again but I think I was thinking too much today!  I will practice again sometime when I’m feeling more relaxed.

Still, I think I have improved since my first attempt.  Also, I remember when I first tried how hard it was to get the proportions right.  I’m a bit better at that now.  My teacher said that when kids practice shuji that’s a common problem.  They do the first part really big and then run out of space on the paper.

Anyway, my second class was lots of fun and I’m already looking forward to going back next week!  And, of course, I can practice at home now any time I want to now!  I hope it helps me to improve my kanji!

Finally, a call for suggestions… I need to think of more kanji I want to write!  I’ve done the obvious ones, so I need to think which ones I should practice, and which ones might be nice to write.  So, any suggestions? Please leave a comment!    Thanks!

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