Morita Shiryū: Bokujin

In a world of rapidly changing values, beliefs, and conditions after the spread of coronavirus people are turning their attention to search for the self that is on the inside. It is time to shed light on Morita who, a half century ago, succeeded to elevate Japanese calligraphy, a traditional art from embedded in East Asian culture, to the world stage in the postwar years by transforming his words and body movements into artistic expression.

We’re excited to welcome you to Morita Shiryū: Bokujin.

III. Chronology & Selected Exhibitions

Chronology

He also had a life-changing encounter in Kobe―he met the calligrapher Ueda Sōkyū who was visiting Kobe during a lecture tour. On Ueda’s recommendation, Morita moved to Tokyo and studied calligraphy under him. Like Morita, Ueda was born in the Tajima area, the northern part of Hyogo prefecture, and had studied under Hidai Tenrai. By 1938, Ueda established Shodō Geijutsu Sha (Calligraphy Art Company) with Kaneko Ōtei and others, and built a reputation as one of the pioneering avant-garde calligraphers. It did not take long for Morita to be recognized, either. As early as 1937, a year after Morita moved to Tokyo, he exhibited at the Second Great Japan Calligraphy Society Exhibition, where he received the gold commendation award for his rinsho (free-hand copy) of Kanjōki, and won the first place among the silver awards for his original calligraphic work of a classical Chinese poem. Both works were designated as exemplary models for the Great Japan Calligraphy Society on Hidai Tenrai’s recommendation. He further received awards at the Japan-Manchuria-China Calligraphy Exhibition and the Third Great Japan Calligraphy Society Exhibition, garnering him recognition as a promising calligrapher while still in his twenties.

However, Morita fell ill during this period, presumably in 1936, as it has been mentioned that this episode had happened shortly after the February 26 Incident. Morita underwent an abdominal operation followed by another due to peritoneal adhesion. For a month before and after the operations, he suffered from high temperature and unbearable pain. For Morita, however, this hardship was a sign from heaven. Writhing in his hospital bed and thinking of ways to escape from pain, he eventually ceased to solely focus on his ailing, realizing that the pain is himself, and that he had to become one with it. He remembered: “We will be constrained by the brush if we perceive it as something on the exterior, conscious only of its usage and movements. Yet when we internalize the brush and become one with it, it will move along with the force of our life commands. In other words, I came to realize that the brush moves smoothest when I simply forget about its presence.”² This remark closely relates to the essence of Morita’s calligraphy, especially in its divergence from the so-called automatism, and I will return to this point later.

Shadow from the Future. Ink on paper, 148 x 121 cm, 1949.

Ryū. Aluminum pigment and lacquer on paper, 24.2 x 31 cm, 1965. The character ryū (dragon) is the second character of Morita's artist name "Shiryū." It always held special significance for Morita.

While in Tokyo, Morita edited Kenpitsu (Wielding the Brush), a calligraphy magazine for students, and Shodō Geijutsu (Art of Calligraphy), which was then a major magazine for new trends in calligraphy. Interestingly, practitioners of calligraphy at the time perceived journals as a primary medium for presenting their works, more so than exhibitions and private schools. This attitude among the practitioners is telling of the distinctiveness of the discipline, and it also had a significant impact on Morita’s career as a calligrapher. As the war intensified, Morita was forced to evacuate to his hometown in Toyooka at the end of 1944, and Ueda also evacuated to his hometown around the same time. Probably due to these circumstances, Morita started editing and publishing Sho no Bi (Beauty of Sho), a journal of Ueda Sōkyū’s school of calligraphy, in 1948. Morita recalls this time as follows:

“Although I was in the remote, northern end of Hyogo prefecture, I was boasting that this was the center of Japan. I produced calligraphic pieces for the journals, rinsho exemplars, and works for exhibitions, if there were any. I also wrote essays if necessary and enjoyed working not only as an editor but taking charge of everything. At the time, the world of avant-garde calligraphy was not fully developed yet, and it lacked any strong theoretical foundation. Seeing calligraphy in such a state was worrying me as an editor, and I gradually developed an interest in establishing a theory of calligraphy.” ³

Morita moved to Kyoto in 1950. During his time in Toyooka, Morita had already made acquaintance with Ijima Tsutomu, a professor of aesthetics at Kyoto University, and had developed a fascination for the Zen philosophy of Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, so Kyoto was an ideal place to advance his style of calligraphy and its theories. Morita’s first task was to draw on his experience as an editor to launch a completely new journal, namely Bokubi, a comprehensive journal of calligraphic art first published in June 1951. Bokubi’s distinctiveness from other calligraphy journals with which Morita had previously been involved is evident in the seven objectives set out in the opening statement of its inaugural issue: “Aesthetic investigation of calligraphy; examining calligraphy within the whole human life; establishing the discipline of calligraphy based on ideas of modern art; examining calligraphy within a comprehensive perspective of art and aesthetics; expanding [East Asian] calligraphy on a global scale; reevaluation of classics; enhancing the social status of calligraphy.” Many of these goals are rooted in a concept of interdisciplinarity that seeks to reassess calligraphy by taking into consideration its relationship to different artistic disciplines, its regional character, and its role within society as a whole.

Cover of the first issue of Bokubi, featuring a painting by Franz Kline, 1951.

Cover of the first issue of Bokujin, 1952.

 

 

The period before and after Morita launched the Bokubi journal is marked by several events that had significant impact on him. In 1951, Ueda submitted a commissioned work entitled Ai (愛, love) to the Nitten exhibition. This work apparently was inspired by the sight of his grandchild crawling, although its form evokes the character hin or shina (品, refinement, goods). The perceived image, therefore, contradicts the sound that the title purports to produce. At the time, the conflict between traditionalist calligraphers and avant-garde calligraphers in the calligraphy section of Nitten was intensifying, and Ai ignited a controversy between these opposing factions. Although Ueda eventually left the Nitten, he at first sought to carry out reforms from within by remaining a member. On the contrary, Morita and other young calligraphers criticized the outmoded and closed nature of the calligraphic establishment, and advocated for a more thorough reform.

As discussed earlier, Morita spoke with gratitude of the many mentors he met in his youth, so he must have felt deeply indebted to Ueda in developing his skills and approach to calligraphy. Nevertheless, he decided to part ways with his former teacher and pursue his own path. Morita and four like-minded calligraphers―Inoue Yūichi, Eguchi Sōgen, Sekiya Yoshimichi, and Nakamura Bokushi―gathered at Ryōanji temple in Kyoto to form the Bokujinkai calligraphy group on January 5, 1952. This was accompanied by sending out letters to Ueda and other leading figures of the calligraphy circles that detailed the purposes of forming the group. Morita described these events later with strong words as themselves “rising to action.” Included in the final issue of Sho no Bi, for which Morita was the editor, are a farewell address of the five young calligraphers, directed at Ueda, and the latter’s response to it. These two letters, which reveal the strong bond between a mentor and his pupils despite expressing strong disagreements, are moving to read even today.

The Bokujinkai group immediately started their activities. They launched the group journal Bokujin and as early as January 1954 held the first Bokujin Exhibition at Maruzen Gallery in Kyoto. As it is easy to confuse, I would like to note again that Bokujin was published as the Bokujinkai group’s journal and was first edited by Inoue Yūichi, and from 1956 by Tsuji Futoshi. As a successor of Sho no Bi, Bokujin retained its nature as a journal that selects and reviews calligraphic works from readers.

Of particular interest is the fact that Sho no Bi’s Alpha Column, a section featuring experimental works that do not adhere to the textual nature of calligraphy, was continued in Bokujin. At Sho no Bi, Hasegawa Saburō, a painter and friend of Morita’s, was responsible for selecting and reviewing contributed works for the Alpha Column, while the editors for Bokujin’s Alpha Column included Yoshihara Jirō and other prominent abstract painters from Osaka and Kobe. The Bokubi journal, which was launched earlier, had a strong theoretical character reflecting Morita’s awareness of the issues discussed above, with many contributions from scholars and critics. The seven objectives of Bokubi have been previously mentioned, and indeed the inaugural issue of Bokubi clearly followed a course of action set out in these goals. For instance, it included a cover illustration not of a calligraphic work but an Abstract Expressionist painting by the American artist Franz Kline. It also featured a commentary on Kline by Hasegawa Saburō, and even a résumé in French at the end. There is no doubt that Morita was introduced to Kline by Hasegawa, who was fluent in foreign languages and had held solo exhibitions in the United States several times. It is uncertain whether Bokubi was sent overseas, but Inoue Yūichi at some point remarked that the journal would soon be circulated in New York.⁴

Notably, Japanese calligraphy attracted increasing attention in the Unites States during this period, attested by a number of calligraphy exhibitions: the Modern Calligraphy Exhibition by Shodō Geijutsuin at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1952; and the Architecture and Calligraphy of Japan Exhibition, curated by Arthur Drexler and held at the same museum the following year, included works by Morita, Ueda, Uno Sesson, and Shinoda Tōkō. Starting with Morita’s participation in Salon d’Octobre in 1953, Japanese calligraphers also began presenting works in Europe through exhibitions such as the Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy: Art in Sumi exhibition in 1955-56 that toured Amsterdam, Basel, Paris, Hamburg, and Rome, the 1957 San Paulo Biennial, and the Carnegie International Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings and Sculpture in 1958.

We might ask in return: what possibilities did the interactions with painters open up for calligraphers? By showing calligraphy at exhibitions alongside other types of artwork, avant-garde calligraphers realized the potential of calligraphy as an art form for large public spaces, rather than as a private occupation carried out at home and in classrooms like rinsho (copying from exemplary works or old masters) or when submitting calligraphy for the competitions held by magazines and journals. They enlarged the size of their works to achieve a sense of physical presence that would put them on par as works of art when displayed in an art museum. It should be pointed out that pioneering works of Japanese avant-garde calligraphy by those like Teshima Yūkei and Hidai Tenrai were exceptionally large. At the same time, the calligraphers established an approach called shōjisū-sho, which is usually limited to only one or two characters per composition. In conventional calligraphy, the writer would render a whole passage or sentence from a given text, so the act of reading and the relationship of one characters to the other in a sequence is of importance. However, single- or two-character compositions are linked to the act of looking, hence its potential to be read visually as an image. The emergence of this style is not only related to the issue of scale but the question of whether calligraphy should be regarded as a set of characters or an image—a problem which strikes at the heart of ink abstraction.

Moreover, Morita and Inoue experimented with mixing ink and materials foreign to calligraphy, such as lacquer, pigments, and glue to create calligraphic works with a pronounced sense of materiality. As a result, the works of Morita and Inoue produced at the time easily bear comparison with abstract paintings of their contemporaries in terms of their presence and intensity. Calligraphy had at last achieved a strength that equaled that of painting. I have previously mentioned that Japanese calligraphy was widely introduced to Europe and the United States in the 1950s, and that domestic exhibitions of modern art often included a section on “ink abstraction,” allowing paintings and calligraphic works to be displayed in places of equal prominence. These conditions surrounding calligraphy were a natural outcome of the interrelated nature of abstract painting and avant-garde calligraphy at that time.

In Morita’s single-character works from that time, for instance Tō (凍) or Datsu (脱), we recognize their unwavering presence as texts, but also the fact that they are embedded in temporality. One of the points that Yoshihara criticized about Mondrian’s paintings was that it is difficult to determine how much time was spent to produce them. To paraphrase this, we cannot discern in what order the brushstrokes of action paintings are executed, while in avant-garde calligraphy we could instantly infer the movements of brush and follow its paths. This is because, as a general rule, every character has a stroke order, and these strokes are normally written from left to right and from top to bottom. Therefore a precise order and temporality is inherent in every work, even if it only consists of a single character. Admittedly, calligraphy is constrained by its textual nature. For Morita, however, this was not a real constraint. The very understanding of calligraphy’s textual nature as a constraint reveals, though unexpectedly, the fact that one’s own thinking is still within the constraints of shape and form. Avant-garde calligraphy is defined by characters as its framework, and its temporality, which articulates an irreversible flow of time that cannot be replicated. While a brushstroke in action painting can be painted over, a stroke in calligraphy cannot be redone or corrected. Morita’s calligraphy is accomplished in a single session, and he likened this impossibility of replication to the life of a calligrapher who only lives once.

Therefore, he understood the degree of completion in calligraphy as a mirror of in the calligrapher’s life. In a Bokujinkai workshop in 1961, Morita concluded: “The beauty of calligraphy lies in the reflection of one’s true self, which is actualized through the characters, composed by brush, ink, and paper.”⁸ This relates to the notion of “the movement of one’s inner life,” which I touched upon earlier. Morita now shifted his focus from “calligraphy as an object” to “the calligrapher as a subject.” As if echoing this idea, the Bokubi journal, which devoted many pages to discussions of abstract paintings in the 1950s, started featuring articles on the writings of old masters and the calligraphy of their predecessors. This moment marked the end of a brief romance between calligraphy and abstract painting. Although Morita continued producing works rife with intensity, his approach was no longer based on the idea of advancing calligraphy through competition with other artistic disciplines or avant-garde art in the United States and Europe, as he sought at the time of Bokubi ’s inauguration. Instead, he had arrived at an essentialist and spiritualist approach. However, Morita’s works from the 1960s onwards, which are often associated with Zen philosophy, are beyond the scope of our discussion and call for a different perspective.

(Osaki Shin’ichirō, Deputy Director of Tottori Prefectural Museum)