Pop Japan

If Japanese art is a sports team, consider Ukiyo-e and calligraphy as their two players that simply go hand in hand. Ukiyo-e is an art that requires a combination of painting and sculpture skills, as it is basically carving your design on the woodblock and painting it as you please. When the art form became huge in the 1600s, its pioneering artists created designs that were inspired by the following: Females, kabuki actors, folk tales, geography, and erotica.

Calligraphy, as we may all know, is the traditional artistic style of Japanese writing. Japanese calligraphy’s early years were heavily inspired by the Chinese calligraphy; majority of the techniques and other basic principles are quite similar. The writing styles include the seal script, clerical script, regular script, semi-cursive, and cursive. Among the primary tools for Japanese calligraphy are brushes, inksticks, mulberry papers, and inkstones. The secondary tools are paper weights, cloths, and seals.