Welcome to Takase Studios
Takase Studios is home to the art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase, shared with people around the world since 1995.
Here you will find hand-brushed scrolls, custom calligraphy, and designs for a name, a word or a tattoo. Whether you are looking for a traditional scroll for your tokonoma or a meaningful Japanese tattoo design, our goal is beautiful art, excellent quality, and the history and context to go with it: what each text means, where it comes from, and the story behind it.
As you view Master Takase's calligraphy, remember each piece is an original, personally created by her. We want you to appreciate it for its beauty, and for its meaning and history.
Master Eri Takase
Eri Takase is a Master Japanese Calligrapher, born and raised in Osaka. She has practiced calligraphy since she was six, and in 1989 achieved the rank of Shihan from two of Japan's most prestigious calligraphic societies, the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo, winning multiple best-of-category awards in all-Japan national competitions.
Her style has been described as refined and cultured. Her guiding principle is onkochishin (温故知新), "respect the past, create the new," and in her words, "Japanese Calligraphy is too beautiful a bird to be locked in the cage of a thousand years of tradition."
For more than thirty years, Eri has created art for people, for products, for books, and for film, and her work has reached further than she ever dreamed. Read more about Master Takase.
Japanese Scrolls
A hand-brushed scroll brings a word, a saying or a poem into your home, to live with every day.
Our Japanese scroll catalog holds the texts Master Takase brushes as scrolls, from single words like love and courage to Zen phrases, martial arts maxims, wedding blessings and the haiku of Bashō and Issa. Each scroll page tells you what the words mean, where they come from and the story behind them, and shows the scroll hanging in a room so you can picture it on your own wall. The scroll in the photograph at the top of this page, 本来無一物, is one of them.
Looking for something of your own? With a custom scroll you work directly with Master Takase on the words, the translation and the style, from a single word to a favorite quote or passage. Custom Japanese scrolls
Each scroll is personally brushed by Master Takase and proudly bears her seal and signature.
Custom Japanese Calligraphy
Beyond the catalog, Master Takase creates calligraphy made for you: a tattoo design, a seal for you or your school, rank certificates for your dojo, and art for your home. For businesses she brushes logos, packaging, book covers and artwork for film, and her work has appeared in Onitsuka Tiger advertising for Asics America, on the runway for Ralph Rucci, on a karate championship poster, in the film The Creed, and as the centerpiece of the TV Guide Emmy After Party. See all our custom work.
Japanese Tattoo Designs
Tattoo designs by Master Takase, everything your tattoo artist needs to ink the design.
Names in Japanese
Your name in Japanese depends on how you say it. Enter your name, choose the pronunciation that is yours, and see it in Master Takase's calligraphy.
Japanese Calligraphy Lessons
Learn the basics of Japanese calligraphy with Master Calligrapher Eri Takase. These lessons teach the block script, kaisho: the tools you need, how to use them and care for them, and the basic strokes. They are excellent lessons for the beginning calligrapher.
The Library
Behind every design is what we have learned about Japanese names, the Japanese language and the texts Master Takase brushes, and our library is where we share it.
You will find how a name is translated into Japanese from the way it is pronounced, how it can be written in katakana, hiragana or kanji, and what it means. You can read how the Japanese writing system works, follow each text Master Takase brushes to its oldest record in our Philology articles, and hear from Master Takase herself in her interviews. Rare books on Japanese art and culture, digitized and hosted since 1998, are there too.
We hope it helps you choose your design with confidence, and enjoy the art all the more for knowing its story.