Cursive · sōsho 草書 · VC3B
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.
無常 mujō Impermanence
Impermanence: nothing stays as it is.
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
無常 is the Buddhist teaching that nothing holds its form: all that arises changes and passes. 無 is without and 常 is constant, always the same, so the word says simply not constant. It is a truth about the world, not a feeling of doubt. In Japanese it can also mean a death, and its poems give it a feeling English has no single word for. That nothing holds its form is the sense we read in the two characters, the one the Buddhists kept from the Chinese. Whether the word lands on the wall as the stillness of the sutras or as the feeling of its poems is in the reader, and the word has room for both.
無常 is composed of the kanji 無 (read mu) meaning "without, not" and 常 (read jō) meaning "constant, unchanging".
In China the word is older than Buddhism's arrival, meaning without constancy in the 易 and the 孫子, and the translators of the sutras took it for the Sanskrit anitya, the impermanence of everything that arises, which is its sense in the earliest Japanese uses the dictionary cites; a poem of 750 headed with the word calls the world 常なき, without constancy.
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 無常.
