Block · kaisho 楷書 · VB5J
Block or kaisho (楷書) styles are the most common and recognizable styles. Block styles are easily read and are noted for their angular form and their vertical and horizontal lines.
切磋琢磨
sessa takuma
Polish One Another
Effort upon effort to learn and cultivate virtue, and friends who encourage and compete with one another to improve.
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.
30-day money-back guarantee
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
切磋琢磨 (sessa takuma): effort upon effort to learn and cultivate virtue, and friends encouraging and competing with one another to improve.
The 日本国語大辞典 gives the same two senses: polishing one's learning, virtue or art, and companions encouraging and competing so that each improves. Word for word, the four characters name four crafts: cutting bone, filing ivory, carving jade and grinding stone. Whether it is for a graduate or for friends who push each other on is yours.
In the winter of 1825 to 1826, four friends made a book of their verse and prose. They called it 切磋編, the Book of Cutting and Polishing. Its preface says that learning prizes not cutting and polishing by oneself, but friends cutting and polishing one another.
In 1864 the rules of the Yoshii domain's school called cutting and polishing the way of friends. In debate, the rules allowed voices to rise a little, so long as each yielded to what was right. In Nakajima Atsushi's story 山月記 (1942), a poet turned tiger confesses that he did not seek out fellow poets to cut and polish one another.
Chinese: four verbs from a song in the Book of Songs, which praises a lord as cut, filed, carved and polished, and which Confucius's pupil Zigong quotes in the Analects; one word by the first century, in Wang Chong; the sense of companions polishing one another in the Tiantai master Zhiyi's 摩訶止觀 (594), glossed by his commentator Zhanran (765). In Japan, the 日本国語大辞典's earliest example of the word is a letter of Saichō, the founder of the Tendai school in Japan, to a companion who did not come back.
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 切磋琢磨.
