Naoko Mikami delves into how calligraphy played a role in the lives of samurai warriors. Samurai sometimes created calligraphy themselves or exchanged works with other samurai, and the message conveyed was more important than the artistic beauty of the piece.
The message is paramount in calligraphy
Nick: Let's touch on Budo or samurai, because that is a strong theme in your work. So if we go back to samurai era, what was calligraphy for, in I guess, for samurai in their days? You touched on it earlier, this reminder of how to live your life for maybe a virtue to uphold?
Naoko: Yeah, exactly. So sometimes, they do calligraphy by their own, but sometimes samurai presents his work to other samurai, and it was not that special at the time, I think. But the message was important, but it doesn't matter—it matters, but it doesn't that matter if the work is beautiful or not.
Nick: The message, it’s the message. This is really interesting. But I think that makes sense, you take this time to have an artist write a message. Of course, the message would have a lot of thought and feeling behind it. I guess as Westerners, we see samurai as warriors, fighting and killing people.
But this other side to them, where they're drinking tea, and discussing calligraphy, and giving gifts of calligraphies. I guess it's that the softness of the warrior or the inner heart of the warrior that we don't often talk about
Naoko: There is a word called bunburyodo, so it means *bun ‘*the study’, and *bu ‘*the martial arts.’ You need always to have both ways in your side.
Nick: Good way to live by, and yodo, that is, do would be ‘the path’ and yo would be ‘two.’