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On 9 February the calligraphy exhibition by Ms. Shiho Seki at the Information and Cultural Centre was opened. Ms. Shiho Seki has for many years mastered the art of making personalized greetings in the form of postcards with calligraphy expressing the artist’s emotions. At the exhibition some of these were displayed as kakejiku (hanging scrolls) but most of the exhibition was a new type of art the artist has been practicing recently. The artist uses the kanji (Chinese characters) often used for calligraphy and creates paintings inspired by the very artistic kanji used in calligraphy.
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The kanji rendered by calligraphy and the painting inspired by it.
On Friday 9 February Ambassador Kondo welcomed the guests to the exhibition and then Ms. Seki demonstrated the art of calligraphy by writing the “iroha”. The iroha is sometimes translated as the Japanese ABC as it is a Japanese poem thought to be from the eleventh century which is a pangram, i.e. it contains every sound from the Japanese syllabary once.
Ms. Seki also presented each of the guests with a postcard sized personalized greeting from her to commemorate the event. She had prepared some of them in advance in Japan since the exhibition was a great success with so many guests and the exhibition had been fully booked several weeks in advance.