Performance calligraphy

Performance calligraphy (書道パフォーマンス) is a kind of Japanese calligraphy combining traditional calligraphy with J-pop music and dance. It is a team activity, performed on large canvases. Performance calligraphy is gaining popularity amongst young Japanese, especially high-school students. Several high schools in Japan offer performance calligraphy as a club activity.

A variety of different brushes are used in performance calligraphy, some almost 130 cm long. It is performed on large canvases, sometimes as much as ten meters long and five meters wide. In the vast majority of cases it is performed by women, and performers usually wear traditional Japanese hakama. Performance calligraphy requires strength and stamina, and the training for it can be tough. At Matsuyama Girls High School in Saitama Prefecture, students practice for four hours each day, and it is common for beginners to have muscle pain.

Performance calligraphy was conceived by Kenji Kiyohara, an adviser to the calligraphy club of Seihō High School in Buzen, Fukuoka Prefecture. The club first demonstrated the new style of calligraphy in 1993 at a hotel function celebrating their national title victory at the International High School Shodō Exhibition. At that time, the performance was done without music. The first time the calligraphy club combined music with their performance was in 1998, when they appeared on the TV Asahi program Zenkoku Kōkōsei Bunka Matsuri Grand Prix, with their performance choreographed to Da Pump's debut song Feelin' Good (It's Paradise). At the time, the students called it karaoke shodō (karaoke calligraphy); it only became known as performance shodō (performance calligraphy) later. The TV Asahi performance resulted in nationwide interest in performance calligraphy.

In Japan there is a national tournament dedicated to performance calligraphy, called the Shodō Performance Kōshien. It was proposed by Kazutaka Hattori, then a calligraphy club advisor at Mishima High School, in Shikokuchūō, Ehime Prefecture The tournament was first held in Shikokuchūō in 2008, with three high schools participating and an audience of 300 people. The fourth Shodō Performance Kōshien in July 2011 saw fifteen schools participate, and an audience of 3,500 people.

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