Semi-Cursive · gyōsho 行書 · VS5C
Semi-Cursive or gyōsho (行書) styles are a simplified and softer form of the kaisho styles. Gyōsho styles can be read by most Japanese.
隻手の音声
sekishu no onjō
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
The sound of one hand.
by Master Eri Takase
Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Eri Takase received the rank of Shihan, master, from two calligraphy societies, the Bokuteki-kai and Bunka-shodō, and won best-of-category awards in all-Japan national competitions. She has created calligraphy for people around the world for more than thirty years, and with your order she will be creating calligraphy for you.
In a ritual as old as calligraphy itself, Master Takase prepares the ink, meditatively rubbing the ink stick against the stone until it reaches the perfect consistency for the paper. Then, properly loading the brush with ink, she brushes your scroll. And only when the scroll is just right and meets her approval, she signs it and affixes her seal, completing your original scroll.
12 1/4" × 43" (31 × 109 cm) Japanese Scrolls
The scrolls have woven damask borders and special layered Japanese paper (washi), designed to last generations by a scroll maker in Gifu, Japan, with whom we have worked for over two decades.
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Explanation
The Sound of One Hand Clapping in Japanese is 隻手の音声 which is read sekishu no onjō
隻手の音声 (sekishu no onjō): the sound of one hand.
What is the sound of one hand? The koan is Hakuin's, the Zen master who gave it to beginners, and he set it himself: two hands struck together make a sharp sound; one hand raised has neither sound nor scent. It is a question put to a student and meant to be sat with, not answered. The one hand is raised, not clapped; clapping is the English title's word, in print by 1935 and made famous by J. D. Salinger's epigraph, and the four characters say only the sound of one hand. 音声, a sutra word, is read onjō here. A scroll of it hangs a question, and the sitting with it is yours.
Hakuin Ekaku says, in his own tract of 1753, that he began setting the question five or six years earlier, after forty-five years of the older 無字 koan had brought only some dozens of students through; the sound-of-one-hand question is his own device, replacing the older koan rather than translating or adapting an earlier text.
Learn More About These Words
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 隻手の音声.
