The other day, I went to Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Literature to discuss the workshop which is planned in this summer. I will notify the detail when it’s ready.
After the meeting, I looked around the exhibition “The Rhythm of Handwriting” currently being held at the museum.
There you can see hand-drawn scrolls, and handwritten manuscripts and letters by Akiko YOSANO, Ryunosuke AKUTAGAWA, Dakotsu IIDA, Seiko NAKAMURA, Seifu TSUDA, Taijun TAKEDA, and etc.
In this era where electronic characters are the mainstream, I am moved by the energy (rhythm) of the writing while imagining through the handwriting the way people were like and lived.
In this exhibition, I fixed my eyes on “Hyakushu Byobu” of Akiko YOSANO which was a two-fold screen with Akiko’s a hundred poems closely written.
Even the characters with thin flowing lines, you can see the light and shade of the ink, and I feel Akiko’a strength of will.
She had kept challenging new things while she published her masterpiece “Midaregami” in her twenties, married to Hiroshi (Tekkan) YOSANO, worked on translation of “The Tale of Genji” in modern language and managed a large household as a mother of 11 children.
I observe Akiko YOSANO, a woman of passion, motherhood and yet modern, through her own handwriting.
While I had enjoyed the showpieces thoroughly, I did have some feelings of guiltiness and felt sorry for seeing the private letters and manuscripts with corrections.
But it’s still so fascinating! Shifu, which keeps the traces and energy (rhythm) of characters, was born from this contradiction, but I cannot tear the precious materials that should be handed down to posterity in pieces, can I?
30th anniversary New Collection Exhibition “The Rhythm of Handwriting”
From 26, Jan, 2019 to 24, Mar, 2019 @Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Literature