Works by Matsuura Ryūha

Tsukubai in the Japanese garden in Hammersmith Park.

The object itself is called a tsukubai and is a stone wash basin often placed in Japanese gardens. The four characters around the edge appear to be (reading clockwise from the top) 五 (JP: go; “five”), 佳 (JP: kei; “excellent/beautiful”), 止 (JP: shi; “stop”), and 矢 (JP: ya; “arrow”).

Closer inspection reveals that the final two strokes of 止 are angled, which would be unusual for this character in this style. However, it would not be unusual if the square 口 (JP: kuchi; “mouth”) in the centre of the basin were joined to the top of 止 to form the character 足 (JP: taru; “suffice”).

In fact, the other three characters can each be joined to 口 to form characters with different meanings: 五 with 口 underneath is 吾 (JP: ware; “I”), 佳 with 口 on the left is 唯 (JP: tada; “only, just”), and 矢 with 口 on the right is 知 (JP: shiru; “know”). Together, the four characters make the phrase 吾唯足知 (JP: ware tada taru wo shiru; “I am content with what I am/have”).

Not long afterwards, I was planning to write 穏和 (JP: onwa; “gentle, mild”)for some friends of mine, and I remembered that there was an old form of the character 和 that I could use: 龢. In this form, 禾 (JP: nogi hen; “grain stalk radical”) is on the right-hand side of the character. 穏 has 禾 on its left-hand side.

The 秀 (JP: shū; “excellence”) of my own penname has 禾 on the top. I wondered if there was a character with 禾 on the bottom so that I could make my own version of 吾唯足知 using 禾 as the shared radical (rather than 口).

There appear to be only two such characters. Fortunately, one of them, 稟 (JP: rin; “accept the gift of life”), forms a natural compound with 秀: 稟秀 (JP: rinshū; “natural beauty”).

I had succeeded in making my own kanji mandala from the compounds 穏龢 and 稟秀 (read top-to-bottom and right-to-left rather than in a clockwise circle) centred on the radical 禾, which represents a fruitful rice stalk bending under the weight of its grain.

I jotted down some notes (see below) and sent them to Ryūha. I thought it might look good in clerical script or Zhou-dynasty seal script, but I left the choice up to him. You can see what he came up with at the top of this page.

My notes on Ine no mandara.

I was delighted with the piece. There are elements of Nishikawa Yasushi’s and Ushikubo Gojū’s styles, as well as Ryūha’s own unmistakable, confident touches. Truly wonderful!

Ryūha performing calligraphy at an elementary school in Japan.