Cursive · sōsho 草書 · VC4B
Cursive or sōsho (草書) styles are the most simplified styles and Master Takase's favorite. While very beautiful, these styles are often difficult to read even by specialists.
常在戦場
jōzai senjō
Always on the Battlefield
Always on the battlefield: the precept a samurai house made the first line of its house rules.
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.
Gift-Ready
Your scroll arrives boxed, with a printed insert describing the words in detail.
Sending it as a gift? Add your message at checkout and we will include it with the insert.
Ships in 1-3 days from Washington State
Your scroll is brushed when you order it and completed within 1 to 3 business days.
Your scroll ships from Master Takase's studio in Washington State. Shipping is calculated at checkout. We ship worldwide.
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Every order is covered by our 30-day money-back guarantee. If your scroll arrives damaged, or we made an error, we replace it or refund you in full, including shipping.
Explanation
The four characters say always and the battlefield and leave ready for the reader to supply, and a Japanese dictionary gives them as a precept: act always with the readiness of one on a battlefield. In Nagaoka, whose historian called it a creed of its samurai, it was kept by plainness of life and drill, and a book most likely by one of its scholars gives it as the answer to what peace does to people who forget. A lord of Nagaoka made it a poem: a warrior is one who keeps a heart that thinks, always and only, I am on the field of battle. A person who chooses it takes a rule for every day.
Master Takase writes the four characters in block, semi-cursive and cursive script. She also writes them in her own font design. On the scroll, and on several of the designs, she writes 戦 in its older form 戰, the form the old books used.
The Japanese phrase 常在戦場 meaning "Always on the Battlefield" is composed of the word 常在 (read jōzai) meaning "always being (in)" and 戦場 (read senjō) meaning "battlefield".
The oldest text in which searches of Chinese Wikisource, CBETA and the National Diet Library's index find the four characters together is 陳壽's 三國志 (late third century), in the life of the Wu general 朱然, who was watchful all day as if always on the battlefield and drilled his camp even in peace; a samurai family, the 牧野, made them the first article of their house code, by tradition in the sixteenth century, and the phrase became a creed of the domain they founded, 長岡, and, by the books of 1943 and 1944, the motto of the admiral who came from there, 山本五十六, and, by the 1944 textbook, his from his middle-school days.
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 常在戦場.
