Winter Episode: Future child and Kūkai descending | Chapter 2 | Homo rehabilis
That was not spring yet, and was on a winter day.
As I approached my mid-twenties, when I was wandering around in Tokyo looking for something definite, unexpectedly I met again the mentor of my high school days. Then he introduced me a young entrepreneur who was a president of little publishing in his 30s. I was invited by the young entrepreneur to visit the atelier-cum-office of a calligrapher who was in the position of being the representative of young people in Japanese calligraphers at the time. It was 2006.
The name of the calligrapher is Koji KAKINUMA. Born in 1970 and Tochigi Prefecture, he was an avant-garde calligrapher aged 35 back then, having traveled to the United States alone at a young age and held solo exhibitions in New York.
Looking back on my distant memories which have faded too much now, I realize myself at the time, I didn’t have so interest in a person who could be called “avant-garde calligrapher”, and slightly remember an actual feeling that touched the atmosphere where his atelier-cum-office in the cold concrete building was wrapped in the chilly, murky air of a morning city. Now I feel like I can touch actually the feeling again.
Relying on the actual feeling in my memory, I search for the wet cold feel of the metal knob.
The steel door open with a dull sound, and I look inside, I see a short-haired man with colored golden hair. It seems that he is Mr. Kakinuma. Together with the president of the publishing office and another accompanying photographer, we visit in the atelier where the stacks of Japanese writing papers are piled up here and there, and I join in the groping conversations between each other.
Like sewing the up and down tones of voices, the shutter sounds of the camera echoe somewhat subduedly, and everyone in the place is still as half asleep, like a film photography in low-contrast, the morning time goes by.
After an hour-long interview, Mr. Kakinuma, was casually passing on the words with us, began to do the “Rinsho 臨書”. I was unexpectedly drawn into the appearance.
When a calligraphy has begun, in the streamlines of his hands, arms, shoulders, and back to his waist, filled with strange silence, there is the body of a calligrapher who has become as Time itself. And a timeless beauty raging in it. His body movement was surprisingly similar to those of actors performing Noh, Kyōgen, and other traditional act. With my clumsy words, I convey the outline of own actual feeling to him.
“When I performed with Kodo, a Japanese drum troupe, I was told that we used the same body movements. When we use our body to the fullest, wouldn’t we all have the same posture and movement at the last minute?” says Mr. Kakinuma.
The trajectory his body draws in the moment when nothing is written, whether there are no points or no lines, when the brush is away from the paper, he calls it “emptiness” and “margin”. And also “the aesthetic of one word not enough”. That margin is probably something universal in what is called the classics, something that can only be called “essential ambiguity”. Something is certainly swaying in a place where there should be nothing.
The “Rinsho 臨書” that he started in front of us refers to the act of copying the classics of calligraphy word for word. And it is also the act of tracing the motion of the original calligraphers.
“When I played a video of my Rinsho at solo exhibition, 100 out of 100 people were staring at it. I was once told that it looked like a magic trick, even though I was just writing a character. There are many people who are familiar with the calligraphy as works written already but have never seen the writing act. There are things that people who have not do traditional study do not understand.”
The indescribably refreshing feeling that blows away the fixed notion that calligraphy is something to taste by looking, Mr. Kakinuma’s body had such an airiness when he was writing. Here is a definite answer to the question why does he calligrapher wield giant brushes and perform. Distant beyond the seemingly incompatible titles of “avant-garde” and “calligraphy”, he showed me the most essential clue to the question of what is “classic”.
“臨書 Rinsho”Facing the calligraphy: To face it. To grapple it.
Looking the calligraphy: To take a peek. To drop in it.
To go down deep into the bottom while looking down at the abyss.
Rinsho is not just a process of tracing and imitating the brush strokes of the classics, says Mr. Kakinuma. From each character and stroke, he read the writer’s era, environment, personality, and feelings, and incorporate them to himself from the tip of the brush. There is the posture of standing in front of the calligraphy, looking into it, facing it, and grappling with it...
When a calligrapher is writing the buddhist Kūkai’s calligraphy, Kūkai also face the calligrapher and is descending deeply into the calligrapher’s inner abyss from beyond the Time. Also it is the scene of inter fraternizing between Mahāvairocana and a practitioner in Mantra Esoteric Buddhism, which Kūkai wrote in his book. Thinking about it now, I was actually witnessing the scene at the time, but then I still had no way of knowing it.
However, it is true that even at the time, I was catching a glimpse of the “Beyond the Scenery”. Distant beyond the written characters, something unwritten was living and wavering in secret.
“...The work of thoroughly instilling it into my body and mind. If I imitate too much, there are times when the original will not come out.”
Like this, sometimes Mr. Kakinuma is too much immersed in Rinsho, but for him it is “enjoyable” time, he said. Distant beyond his bright voice talking so, I could see a future child enjoying the “time slip” known as calligraphy, jumping over history from the tip of his brush and playing in the past with Time itself together.
I am a native Japanese speaker and the original version of this article was written in Japanese. This translation was done by myself and may contain some errors due to lack of well writing skill in English. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns about the meaning of the texts.The original Japanese text is published in following page.
https://homorehabilis.blogspot.com/2023/02/homo-rehabilis_20.html
