An Interview with Eri Takase

This interview was conducted in June of 2007 for Photoshop Magazine by the editor Murat Akcicek.

I think this interview will be good for Turkish calligraphers. I have prepared some question for you. Here are the questions:

Could you tell us about yourself?

Eri Takase: Thank you, Mr. Akcicek. Our cultures have much in common and I hope my passion for the Calligraphy of my culture will come across.

I was born in Osaka Japan where I have lived most of my life.

As a child raised in postwar Japan my upbringing is so different from what one experiences today that it is difficult to describe. The whole country was changing but my parents were still very much a product of a Japan that is now gone.

As an example, because my father was a small business owner, and because banks then were not what they are today, we always had various amounts of cash in the house stored under the tatami mats. Ruffians from time to time would drop by to test my parent’s resolve and one of my first memories is a thrown shuriken, barely missing my head as I was held in my mother’s arms. My mother's weapon of choice was the naginata, which is like a sword on the end of a pole, and, as I witnessed as a child, she was proficient in its practical use. Though most of the time her demeanor, her voice, and her resolve were her weapons - and so even when she was unarmed, the thugs would end up retreating.

This was a period of transition for Japan and so I was raised strictly in the arts rather than in the martial tradition of my family. Though many martial artists today would recognize my early childhood as that designed to build character and discipline - similar to what one sees only in the strictest of Dojos. This means from an early age being taught to focus one's Ki or inner energy.

As an example, throughout my childhood, even as a toddler, I was made daily to spend hours sitting in a formal position (on one's knees) in front of the butsudan. It was always painful and complaints got me nowhere - or at worst, when I was a bit older, as punishment for my insubordination my mother would apply lit sticks of incense under my fingernails (the idea was that for girls it would hurt but leave no permanent damage or scars as physical blows or slapping might). The objective was always to teach discipline and to teach the focusing of one's Ki as Ki is vital. It is the vital element of everything Japanese and, without saying, it is the vital element to the mastery of Japanese Calligraphy.

It was in such a time and in such a household that at the age of six that I began formally studying Japanese Calligraphy. And I have trained in the art all of my life.

In 1989, after winning several national competitions in Japan I earned the rank of Master or Shihan in Japan's most prestigious calligraphic society the Bokuteki-kai. This society is devoted to training professional calligraphers and so advocates only the most traditional Japanese Calligraphy. I show several examples of my work from professional competitions in my on-line article Traditional Japanese Calligraphy.

While I still love this today, I also felt trapped by it. As an example, one of my favorite personal works at the time was done in blue watercolor and drawn using a broken wooden chopstick. This would have been forbidden to be displayed or entered in any competition. Rather, I quietly but prominently displayed the art in my restaurant for many years.

In the early 90’s I married and moved to the United States. When I moved to the United States I felt a liberation that I cannot describe and promptly began to work with different mediums such as western-style handmade papers, collage, and mixed-media. I thought the results were absolutely beautiful and I could not get enough of it.

An example of the work I was doing at the time is shown below and is suminagashi (Japanese marbling) which I did on Western-Style paper I made myself.

Nakabun about being separated from one's lover and roughly translates as "To he that truly knows my heart, I would show the tears I shed at night." This is an example of traditional calligraphy on a non-traditional medium. One can also see that with calligraphy the beauty of the empty space can be as important as the calligraphy itself.

In contrast to the above, a more traditional work would be the Four Virtues of Tea Wakeiseijaku (which are harmony, respect, purity and tranquility) and which is shown on the right.

The Internet was relatively young when we started our on-line custom design business and this year we will celebrate our 15^th anniversary. We started by mainly focusing on artwork but gradually have done more custom designs for personal and commercial use. Today we work digitally with clients around the world on projects ranging from book illustrations, magazine and ad illustrations to calendars and custom work for people's homes.

Mr. Akcicek: Could you tell about the technique you use in your works? What kind of technical materials do you use?

Eri Takase: I mainly use traditional materials such as Japanese brushes, paper, ink-stone and sumi-ink which I grind myself. This much really has not changed in a thousand years.

Once the ink has dried however, it is all technology. And the Adobe Creative Suite allows us to transform the designs to a variety of formats. As one example we used Adobe Premiere to edit videos we took of the examples being created for our Learn Japanese Calligraphy series of CD's. Unlike a book we can actually show the my creating examples so the students can see the movement of the brush. This is important because Japanese Calligraphy is all about movement and the rhythm and these just cannot be properly demonstrated in a book.

And for the learning CD's we use other programs in the Creative Suite to create an outline of the example and then we can add the stroke order and direction of the stroke which are very helpful to students that may be unfamiliar with kanji. These pieces then combine to give the student powerful resources to properly learn Japanese Calligraphy.

Daily we use Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to produce digital designs in a variety of file formats for our catalog of downloadable stock kanji images. We have several thousand designs for personal and professional use on our website StockKanji - Japanese Character Designs. And these are all created using the Adobe Creative Suite.

Mr. Akcicek: Could you please tell us about your artistic "nourishment" sources?

I also find inspiration in people. With custom work there is always a story behind the design - sometimes it is a campaign statement conveying the image a corporation would like to project and at other times it is the deeply personal story of an individual. The lives, hopes, dreams and fortitude of people is always inspiring and I try to bring this to my art.

I am reminded of artwork that I created for the book "Between Two Souls" by Mary Lou Kownacki which is an exchange of poems between a modern Roman Catholic nun and the nineteenth-century Zen monk Ryokan. From this collaboration came the artwork for a quote from Ryokan, "Oh that my monk&'s robe were wide enough to embrace the suffering of the world."

I show the result of our collaboration on the right.

Mr. Akcicek: Could you please tell about your working atmosphere? Is that big, silence and dispersed room, or something else?

Eri Takase: My preference is certainly for large, uncluttered, well lighted space with jazz softly playing in the background. My studio in Washington was such a place and it was a joy to work in. There were several large tables as well as a drafting table and a desk. Most of my art supplies where stored in adjoining rooms so the whole space was open, functional and serene. With large windows taking up one whole wall I had great light and a view of nature that was always inspiring. We also had a separate area devoted to photographing the artwork and a computer room. My studio looked out over South Puget Sound in Washington State and having nature so close was always an inspiration.

However, almost two years ago we lost the studio and house in a landslide and so today my workspace is quite modest. This has also forced me to concentrate more on design work rather than on larger acrylic works that was my passion. One advantage to this turn of fate is I have moved to Hawaii to make traveling back and forth to Japan easier and here I have some of the best light in the world.

So there is what one would like and what one has - I am happy to be able to do my art.

Mr. Akcicek: Is it difficult to learn to Japanese calligraphy? Can non-Japanese easily learn this art?

Eri Takase: Several years ago I started my own school in the United States teaching calligraphy. It is certainly possible for non-Japanese students to become quite good in a short period of time and all it requires is a bit of know-how and steady practice.

If the student has experience using a brush then things move along more quickly. In either the student should spend a little time every day practicing the brush strokes until the basic strokes come naturally. To learn the basic strokes of the block font this can take as much as a year to become proficient. But once this is learned one has the foundation to write any character in the block font.

Based on my own teaching I started publishing a series of learning CD’s called Learn Japanese Calligraphy that are designed to teach Japanese calligraphy to non-Japanese - even students that may not be familiar with the language. These CD's were picked up by Amazon.com and now are sold world-wide. The first four CD’s cover the first year of study and the results have been very good. I have the pleasure of grading the works of students that use this method and I am very pleased with the results.

With that said, Japanese calligraphy is a very broad area and one can spend a lifetime learning the subject with most artists specializing in a particular font or style. Though one does not need to spend a lifetime to learn to enjoy the art.

Mr. Akcicek: In the Turkey there is a long history and accumulation about calligraphy art. But today unfortunately there is not so much interesting for this art. And we know that there is same huge history and accumulation about calligraphy in Japan. Today, what's the condition of calligraphy in Japan? Still are there enough interesting for this art?

Eri Takase: When I was asked to do this I thought of Kouichi Honda who is a Japanese national doing Arabic calligraphy. There was even an article about him on CNN in 2000 called Japanese artist specializes in Arabic calligraphy. I was pleased to see this and to see that Japanese have taken such an interest in your beautiful calligraphy. His efforts are making Arabic calligraphy known in Japan and he has made quite an impact.

Japanese Calligraphy is very popular in Japan. I believe I once read that over a million Japanese list calligraphy as a hobby. And this makes sense because Calligraphy is so entwined with the culture. In Buddhism it is a common practice to copy sutras, in the tea ceremony, flower arranging, and bonsai it is traditional to have a calligraphic or sumi-e work in the background. And while Japanese homes are becoming more westernized in design, there is usually one Japanese room with a tokonoma where calligraphy is traditionally displayed.

To some, Calligraphy is not simply an art form but it is also a way of training the mind. And much of the discipline and training required to do calligraphy well carries over into other areas and into life. Dating back to the 16^th century, Japanese most famous swordsman Miyamoto Musashi was also a renowned calligrapher and in his Book of Five Rings recommended the study of calligraphy. The reason being that with calligraphy, as with the tea ceremony, as with Martial Arts, everything one does is part of the art. There are no do-overs, no erasing, no retouching - there are no second chances: all movements are an integral part of the art. The speed with which the line is drawn. The pause. The fluidity of one movement into the next. A powerful line. A gentle line. All visible and all right there in the final work.

To do this requires focused attention and discipline. I imagine that Arabic Calligraphy would have a similar exercise that we practice. The student is to do a 100 character scroll. If a mistake is made, the student must start over from the beginning on a new scroll and will continue until the work is completed without error. Every student does the first character perfectly, but it takes a strong mind to do the final character as well as the first.

Mr. Akcicek: What do people think (who are not Japanese) about Japanese calligraphy? Are there any people who're learning this art from out of Japan?

Eri Takase: Japanese calligraphy is based on pictographs with the earliest characters looking like the item they represented. One form of art is to go back and recreate the image with the character. An example of this is the design for Dragon which I show here.

This style of Japanese Calligraphy art has an appeal I believe because it certainly has the Japanese Calligraphy look and at the same time one can look at the design and have an idea of the meaning.

One can also think of Japanese Calligraphy as purely abstract art. This was used successfully by artists such as the Spanish Artist Joan Miro. Though in Miro’s case it was truly abstract art influenced by calligraphy. With Japanese Calligraphy one gets not only the abstract quality, but there is also a meaning to the design.

An example of this might be the design “Wind in Blue” which is based on the kanji for kaze (wind). With the motion of the brush and the blue watercolor one can almost feel the wind coming off the blue sea.

And in some cases Japanese Calligraphy can be abstract art even to Japanese. This is because Japanese Calligraphy has a cursive font that is very difficult to read – indeed even experts can have trouble with the cursive font. The example I show above of the poem fragment by Nakabun is a classic example. This is not only written in a cursive font but it also uses a now obsolete form of kana making it so that only an expert would have a chance to be able to read the design. In this sense, Japanese calligraphy can be abstract art even to Japanese!

The example of the poem by Nakabun brings to mind the fact that Japanese Calligraphy is gaining popularity in China as well. Chinese have kanji (also known as Chinese characters). What it does not have are the kana which are phonetic elements created in 6^th century Japan to represent grammar and verb tenses and other elements unique to the Japanese language. The kana are simple compared to kanji and when done in a cursive font it gives the calligraphy long, almost vertical lines. This is not a style one can do with pure kanji and so while Chinese may not be able to read the calligraphy, they are taken by its lovely form. And it is this specific element that clearly separates Japanese from Chinese Calligraphy.

Mr. Akcicek: Who are your favorite living artists / calligraphers?

Eri Takase: My favorite calligrapher is Sakaki Bakuzan who was born in 1926. He is a free-thinker that years ago turned his back on the establishment to create his own form of calligraphy. He is one of the few that were able to create what he wanted and still remain immensely popular. I own and refer to several of his books which show his encyclopedic knowledge of calligraphy arts and materials and his true love for the art.

Mr. Akcicek: Can you use your art in the business world like illustrator, photographer or graphic designer?

Absolutely. A large part of my work is creating Japanese Calligraphy elements for graphic designers with the designs then being used in books, magazines, on products and as part of a business logo or in marketing materials.

For some specific examples I have done calligraphy for a soy product by Arla Foods that was marketed throughout Europe. I have also worked with Mr. Yoshida’s Cooking Sauce for calligraphy to be used as part of the background on a product label. I have also created illustrations for dozens of books, CD Covers, advertising campaigns, posters and so on. There is certainly a demand for Japanese Calligraphy as a design element.

Of all these projects though, the most difficult for me to grasp is I have an agent specifically for the digital wireless phone market who supplies artwork to companies such as Moviso and 9Square to be used as wallpaper on digital phones. Each quarter tens of thousands of my designs are downloaded to be used on digital phones. I still can’t grasp this one.

With all of this technology though my art is still created the traditional way where I make my own ink by slowing grinding an ink stick on an ink stone and then use one of my hundred brushes on handmade Japanese paper.

Once the ink has dried, however, we use the latest in hardware and software to either create a digital design that can be presented to the customer for review or create a final product ready to be sold on-line as a digital download. All of my custom work is done remotely using the internet so we use scanning software to bring the image into Photoshop where color adjustment and minor cosmetic touchups are done. The image is then converted to a PDF file for presentation to the client. In this manner the Adobe Creative Suite allows me to collaborate digitally with clients around the world.

Besides completely custom work, I also offer stock Japanese calligraphy images for commercial use at our website StockKanji.com. To make this happen, the process is even more advanced as we offer options not only for commercial designers but also for individuals looking for designs for craft and body art. With the later once the designs are scanned, line art for the design is created and the image is then vectorized in Illustrator and then labeling and descriptions are added in InDesign with the final product for non-commercial use being a print-only PDF file. Much of this process is automated which allows me to concentrate on what I do best which is the calligraphy itself.

I have many more examples of Japanese Calligraphy being used commercially on my Graphics Design page on my website.

Mr. Akcicek: Are you involved in any collaborative projects at the moment and is there anyone you would like to work with?

Eri Takase: I am currently working with Kachi-Do, a large on-line Martial Arts supplier in the United Kingdom to create designs to be used as an integral part of the website. This is a large project involving many of our stock images from StockKanji.com and also custom designs to be used as logos, seals, scrolls, and artwork. The final website will be a visually appealing fusion of modern graphic design with traditional Japanese Calligraphy elements.

According to the management of Kachi-Do, "I believe there is a massive demand, the task before us is to make Japanese Calligraphy more and more accessible, this will be achieved by utilizing the technology available such as Master CS3 and developing products that make it easier and more cost attractive to all, this is something we have recently discussed in the development of a package for translation software and a library of designs for our website Kachi-do.com!

This is because we are all looking to feel a part of the communities we are communicating with or in business terms targeting, we all endeavor to grasp onto some form of accepted common identity while remaining unique, wherever we trade, go and whoever we may be communicating with."

Mr. Akcicek: Today, there is much technological development in the visual communication. And some traditional arts like calligraphy is in very different position. What do you think about this subject?

Your question brings to mind one of my favorite sayings "onko chishin" which roughly translates as "respect the past, create the new&" and suggests that it is only by studying and knowing what has come before that we can truly create something that is new. Indeed at the heart of my work is a lifetime of studying traditional calligraphy and it is being true to this that I think makes my art what it is - regardless of the medium or materials that I happen to be using.

Technology allows an artist to reach more people and to do so much more with the art. There will always be room for the completely traditional but as the world adopts Japanese Calligraphy it will also change it to its own taste - and technology acts as a catalyst for this change.

Mr. Akcicek: Do you have any message to Turkish calligraphers and Photoshop Magazine readers?

Eri Takase: Thank you very much for this opportunity to share my work and to talk a little bit about myself and Japanese Calligraphy. And I do hope designers will use the traditional calligraphy or their culture in their design projects.

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