In short
Japanese calligraphy with master calligrapher Yoko Nishina, focusing on her process, aesthetics (monono aware), and a project translating/evoking The Tale of Genji using hiragana, plus her collaboration with photographer Kenro Izu and a visit to the Kobayen sumi ink factory in Nara.
Guest backgrounds
Yoko Nishina is a Japanese calligrapher writing poems in Japanese and Chinese with sumi ink; she works in a master-apprentice tradition and is preparing a 60th-birthday exhibition. Kenro Izu is an award-winning Japanese photographer known for images of sacred spaces; he recently returned to live in Japan and works in monochrome.
Key claims
Calligraphy requires harmonizing paper, ink, and brush; ink-making and drum/temple sounds aid meditation; monochrome parallels calligraphy’s black/white-to-gray range; Genji is written by Murasaki Shikibu, who used hiragana.
Notable examples
Inowashi paper strips for tanzaku; pine-tree soot inks (ikimatsu brown, ochimatsu blue); Kobayen ink made from soot, gelatin, water; ink sticks matured for decades; 31-syllable poem rhythm (5-7-5-7-7) and yin-yang stroke balance.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOExploring Calligraphy
0:20 to 1:29
An introduction to Yoko Nishina and her calligraphy project.
“I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously.”
The Concept of Monono Aware
1:29 to 2:49
Discussion about the Japanese aesthetic concept of Monono Aware.
“I want to take you to Japan to follow a calligrapher at the top of her game.”
Honoring The Tale of Genji
2:49 to 4:02
Yoko Nishina discusses her project centered around The Tale of Genji.
“Yeah, we learn at the school and we inherit this sensibility from our ancestors.”
Visiting Kobayen Ink Factory
4:02 to 6:31
A visit to Kobayen ink factory, exploring traditional ink-making.
“At first glance, The Tale of Genji is a macho romp following the hero as he embarks through a series of affairs.”
Preparing the Ink
6:31 to 9:11
Yoko describes the process of preparing ink for calligraphy.
“It's made from just soot, gelatin and water.”
Choosing the Right Ink
9:11 to 12:43
Yoko explains her choice of ink for her calligraphy project.
“Usually you think too much in the daily life.”
Selecting Brushes for Calligraphy
12:43 to 14:01
Yoko shares insights on the brushes used for her art.
“So the trees are not cut down, they're actually trees that have fallen naturally.”
The Art of Calligraphy: Technique and Expression
14:01 to 17:56
Learn about the unique techniques and philosophies behind Japanese calligraphy.
“Pencil usually, you know, you make an angle like this, but we keep the stick straight.”
Yoko Nishina's Journey and Philosophy
17:56 to 28:00
Explore Yoko Nishina's creative process and the significance of her work.
“You're listening to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Kenro Izue:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. How many streaming subscriptions do you have? Is it the same for your business? Avoid it by having all your business on one platform. Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
0:40Kenro Izue:And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.
1:28Yoko Nishina:The important thing is how I can harmonize paper, ink and brush.
1:38Kenro Izue:I want to take you to Japan to follow a calligrapher at the top of her game. It's a craft passed down from master to apprentice, involving precision but with a flourish, displaying the individual calligrapher's own unique interpretation.
1:54Yoko Nishina:My name is Yoko Nishina. I do Japanese calligraphy. I write the poems in Japanese and in Chinese with a brush and a sumi ink. The brush has springiness and it makes you spontaneous to express richer.
2:15Kenro Izue:So tell me about the project that you're working on at the moment.
2:17Yoko Nishina:I have the project to collaborate with the photographer Kelo Izu and the title of the project is Monono Aware. And what does that mean?
2:29Kenro Izue:What's the idea of that in English?
2:31Yoko Nishina:Monono Aware is pathos and appreciation of the fleeting nature of beauty. The fleeting nature of beauty, wow.
2:41Kenro Izue:It sounds very poetic.
2:43Yoko Nishina:I think this is Japan's aesthetic sensibility for beauty.
2:48Kenro Izue:Is it something that is known throughout Japan as a concept?
2:52Yoko Nishina:Yeah, we learn at the school and we inherit this sensibility from our ancestors.
3:10Yoko Nishina:When I express Japanese poem, I want to express Japanese mood. I have to choose the paper, brush, and ink, which should be harmonized. and of course high quality because the ink which has high quality makes you work smoothly.
3:36Kenro Izue:You're talking about the harmony between the paper the ink and the brush which one comes first? The brush already I have I will choose and then I don't know I will buy paper ink maybe at the
3:52Yoko Nishina:same time.
3:56Kenro Izue:Yoko does calligraphy in both Chinese and Japanese, but her current project centres around an old Japanese text, The Tale of Genji. At first glance, The Tale of Genji is a macho romp following the hero as he embarks through a series of affairs. And yet this Japanese classic was written by a woman. Murasaki Shikibu was a lady-in-waiting in the 11th century, when Japan was becoming more isolated, severing ties with China. Even though she had mastered the pictorial Chinese kanji characters, considered an elevated literary form usually reserved for men, she chose to write using the simple Japanese hiragana alphabet.
4:45Kenro Izue:Yoko uses both forms, but for this project she's honoring Murasaki's words in that same simpler Japanese alphabet. She invites me to a Zen temple in Kyoto in central Japan where she feels she does her best work. You've opened your roll of brushes and we've given them a little flex. The paper I can see you've just laid it out. This paper is called Inowashi.
5:14Yoko Nishina:They are made from a koso tree.
5:18Kenro Izue:So you have all these pieces of paper cut into strips, two or three inches wide and very long.
5:24Yoko Nishina:36 centimetres long and 6 centimetres wide. And is that a regular size for calligraphy? For Tanzaku calligraphy, we call this the size of paper. will you write top to bottom from the top to the bottom so flowing letters
5:46Kenro Izue:flowing down like water I'm really excited to see the ink that we bought from Kobayen
5:52Yoko Nishina:yes, yes, you remember
5:59Yoko Nishina:this is the place where they collect the suits
6:04Kenro Izue:I can see there's somebody here inviting us in There's another soot around the door.
6:15Kenro Izue:I feel like I'm watering to some kind of sacred stakes.
6:23Kenro Izue:Yoko takes me to the famous Kobayen Ink Factory in Nara, the traditional Sumi Ink capital of Japan. This is exactly what she wants to use for her calligraphy. It's made from just soot, gelatin and water. We're in a little room with hundreds of little pots full of a liquid that are burning. Is that vegetable oil? Yes, vegetable oil. There's a lid over every liquid pot that's burning, and there's a sort of wick that's sitting. It almost looks like somebody relaxing in an onsen. It's quite warm in here as well. There's so much burning.
6:59Yoko Nishina:And they turn around this cover every 20 minutes to not unbalanced.
7:08Kenro Izue:Ah, so it burns and collects. So it's even late. Numan is just here to do the turning now for let's see what happens.
7:23Kenro Izue:So he twists it to 45 degrees. Yes, I am. And 20 minutes. So every two hours 40 it gets a full rotation.
7:30Yoko Nishina:Yes.
7:30Kenro Izue:And now I've just come out and I'm all sort of covered in little specks of slack. It's quite a messy business. OK, so the man who just rotated all of the lids is now actually making new wicks. New wicks made from ash. Like by water. Grass is a tanker. So he's sitting twisting all of these bits of reed that roll together neatly, almost like a cigarette or something. And these will be dipped into the oil and burnt later. And he mustn't forget in 20 minutes. Back at the temple, Yoko is preparing some of that soot black ink. You have quite a large black stone. It looks like a miniature swimming pool because it has a deep end and a shallow end.
8:22Yoko Nishina:I call the deeper end the sea and here the beach. I pour the water from the sea to the beach.
8:33Kenro Izue:You're using the ink stick to draw the water up.
8:37Yoko Nishina:Yes. There's a really wonderful smell. This smell relaxes me. I rub the ink on the stone. So just in little circles. Yes. You can see the black ink is coming out. So give it back to the sea. And how many times do you have to do this process? This much water maybe takes 15 minutes or 20 minutes to make a good ink. That's quite a long time. But this is kind of a meditation. Usually you think too much in the daily life. You rub ink stick on the stone. This is a very simple movement. Energy in the brain comes down to here. We call it hara into the pit of your stomach. Yeah, below the stomach. We say that three centimetres below the very bottom.
9:45Kenro Izue:We have some lovely sounds of the temple starting as well, just as you're mixing.
9:51Yoko Nishina:There is a richer today.
9:53Kenro Izue:Do you mind this sound or do you think it helps with your work?
9:56Yoko Nishina:It helps with my work. Yeah, the drum sounds. It's really great.
10:04Yoko Nishina:Sometimes I mix two or three kinds of ink. But usually I do with only one ink. I don't want to do what I know already. I try to surprise me myself.
Read the full transcript
10:22Kenro Izue:So it's not always about what you're looking for. It's about what calligraphy can show you.
10:28Yoko Nishina:Yeah, what the possibility is. Always calligraphy opens the new windows for me. It makes me richer. It sounds like calligraphy is not an art form that gets boring. Never boring. Calligraphy is so deep.
10:50Yoko Nishina:Always the calligraphy appears moment by moment. You will never express what you hoped. Never.
11:00Kenro Izue:Is there some regret about the fact that you can't always put to paper what you see in your mind?
11:06Yoko Nishina:The calligraphy shows always something you didn't expect or something you think of unconsciously. When you write with ink on the white paper, if you use really black sumi, the edge between the ink and the paper will be softer and also not really divide the space. It's black or white. Do you know what kind of ink you will be using for this project? I'm looking for the ink from Pine Tree.
11:44Kenro Izue:Why? What kind of properties does that bring?
11:46Yoko Nishina:So many kinds of colours, like we call seven colours. So seven colours is not literal. Literature. It means many colours. So various colours, many kinds of colours, you know. like more black, more blue, like more purple, more brown. Ink from pine tree has a lighter color. There are two kinds of pine tree inks. The color of ikimatsu is more brown, and the color of ochimatsu is more blue. So very different. And ikimatsu, actually, they are made from soot derived from the resin of living pine trees. Ochimatsu is produced from soot, from dead wood, rich in pine resin. But I prefer the blue one. And that's from the dead wood.
12:42Yoko Nishina:Dead one, yeah, yeah. So I give the life gain.
12:49Kenro Izue:So the trees are not cut down, they're actually trees that have fallen naturally.
12:54Yoko Nishina:Yeah, naturally.
12:55Kenro Izue:It must be really hard for people to find this resin.
12:58Yoko Nishina:Must be, yeah.
13:00Kenro Izue:Now that Yoko has decided which ink to use, she's ready to choose a brush to commit verses of The Tale of Genji onto paper.
13:09Yoko Nishina:I have maybe 300 brushes. 300? Yes. And today, yes, I brought maybe 20 or 30.
13:20Kenro Izue:but you can't do your work on the tail of Genji with the larger brushes. This is for something different.
13:27Yoko Nishina:Yeah, I use for Genji a very thin and small one. What are the brush hairs made of? Oh, they have animals like raccoon, Chinese goat, weasel, hostels, even deer, rabbit, cat.
13:51Yoko Nishina:First, I soften the brush hair with my fingers.
13:57Kenro Izue:So they're sort of pencil-sized brushes. Not very long, about an inch long.
14:01Yoko Nishina:Yeah, I think so.
14:02Kenro Izue:And how do you hold it? Do you hold it like a pencil?
14:05Yoko Nishina:No, no, no. Pencil usually, you know, you make an angle like this, but we keep the stick straight. I see. So you're holding the brush directly upright. When you use the pencil, you use your fingers. But when you hold the brush, I move my arms and shoulders, never fingers.
14:29Kenro Izue:So your whole hand stays perfectly still, but the movement comes from the shoulder and the elbow.
14:40Kenro Izue:So why did you and Kenro decide to have small photographs and small calligraphy for this project? Because when our works are mounted, we can imagine how fit for Japanese space.
14:56Yoko Nishina:In Japanese house, we have a tokonomo where the scroll hung and incense is put.
15:08Kenro Izue:The inkstone is really slick with a thick black liquid. It looks, you know, really like oil or something. How do you know when it's ready?
15:19Yoko Nishina:It's a kind of intuition. So when I look at the ink, I can feel it's ready.
15:28Kenro Izue:So you have some of the pieces that you've done already. What are you thinking?
15:32Yoko Nishina:I think I want to do everything again. Japanese poem is usually 31 syllables. You know, five, seven, five, seven, seven. I try to follow this reason when I write. So like music.
15:56Kenro Izue:Are you ready to start? I think so.
15:59Yoko Nishina:So you move your arms, just follow the rhythm of this poem.
16:17Kenro Izue:Are there any thoughts you're having about whether this is the one?
16:23Yoko Nishina:Yeah, but I want to make more dried strokes here.
16:30Kenro Izue:You're showing me some of the slightly wispier strokes that show a little bit of the paper through.
16:36Yoko Nishina:Yeah, I want to draw the universe always. According to Taoism, this universe consists of elements of yin and yang.
16:50Kenro Izue:You want to have a balance between the thicker, darker strokes and the lighter, wispier strokes.
16:56Yoko Nishina:Yes, and also small character, big character, thin, wide, slower and speedy. So you want to do another with a bit more variety? Yes, I think so. Richer expression.
17:16Kenro Izue:Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott.
17:49Kenro Izue:So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.
17:59Kenro Izue:You're listening to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service. I'm following Japanese calligrapher Yoko Nishina whose pursuit of perfection is clear as she changes brushes and starts again There's definitely more wispier maybe more movement than the one you did before I think so Could this be the final one?
18:25Yoko Nishina:I hope so I think that's successful Maybe I can show Kendall on video talk
18:33Kenro Izue:OK, so this is one that you want to show to Kenro.
18:36Yoko Nishina:Yes, yes, I want to show him. Hi, Kenro-san. Hi, Konnichiwa. It's a 70s. But we should talk in English, right? If that's OK. Yes, of course. Hi. Hajime-mashite.
18:53Kenro Izue:Nice to meet you. Hajime-mashite. Kenro Izu is an award-winning Japanese photographer known for capturing images of sacred spaces who's recently returned to live in Japan. My goal is very simple. It's beauty. It's different from Western beauty. When I start to look at ancient Japanese cultures, when I find beauty in it, it's not as obvious as Western beauty. It's always very discreet.
19:24Yoko Nishina:Eva, you have lived in New York for 50 years? So it's a reconnection. Yeah, reconnection. And I want you to talk about your monochrome photograph because I use Sumi Ink, a black and white word. And you also express your word in monochrome.
19:45Kenro Izue:Since I started when I was 15 years old, always monochrome. Why do you feel this connection to the monochrome photography? It is simply put, it's beautiful. between white and black there's infinitive level of gray.
20:01Yoko Nishina:Same as calligraphy.
20:03Kenro Izue:Yeah, it is. One reason why I insist I do all that darkroom work myself because no matter how well you photograph it, if you print it's not that quality, then you cannot achieve that good grade of gray.
20:19Yoko Nishina:Yeah, the same. I made this one right now. Maybe you can see the graduation of the ink. That's beautiful. I can't wait to see the real. I really like working with Ken Lo. Collaboration gives me a challenge to harmonise the other person because I usually work by myself.
20:47Kenro Izue:And you're not looking at the photograph while you're doing the calligraphy. Do you have the photograph in your mind?
20:54Yoko Nishina:Yes, I absorb the feeling from his photograph. And at the same time, I feel something from literature, you know, this poem from Genji Teir. And then I express that.
21:11Kenro Izue:Yoko tells me she also finds the painstaking process of ink making inspiring for her work. Kobayen is one of the few places which continues to practice traditional methods of production. We're walking into a beautiful courtyard with a bright pink sakura. The walls are this kind of sombre black, which I think is good because it reflects the nature of what happens here making ink. They paint ink on the wall. But not sumi, not expensive sumi ink. That must be a very offensive wall to paint. Behind me there are glass windows and I can see into the workshop where somebody is treading a kind of black dough.
22:00Yoko Nishina:He uses the hands and knee and also heels. Why does he use so many different body parts? Then he can mix really well. and removes the air bubbles from inside. Oh, air bubbles are a problem. Yes, otherwise their ink maker cracks.
22:23Kenro Izue:It looks like really exhausting work. How long can they do this for?
22:28Yoko Nishina:1 day?
22:30Kenro Izue:1 day is, as we do, 8 hours.
22:36Kenro Izue:He works for 8 hours. The dough looks really dense. It doesn't look like it's easy to knead it and massage it. It looks very difficult. So I must be tired. After all that rough handling, which leaves his hands stained inky black, the craftsman pushes bits of the dough into delicate moulds made of pear tree wood, chosen for its ability to draw out moisture, but not too quickly.
23:03Yoko Nishina:Now this dough might be about 25 grams, and later they will be maybe about 15 gram. Right, so they're going to really shrink. And then next step. OK,
23:23Kenro Izue:so now we're in a different workshop and there's a man wearing a mask and he's burying sheets of newspaper in a grey-brown powder. That's ash. Right, so the newspaper stops the semi-ink from touching the after.
23:40Yoko Nishina:From touching, yeah. So they put sumi into moist ash on the first day. And then after scan days, they gradually replace ashes to less moist. And why do they do that? Because sumi ink should be dehydrated little by little. Otherwise, the stick will be bent or broken. So this process takes about a week and about 30 or 40 days for big pews.
24:17Kenro Izue:OK, so in this room, we can see hundreds, thousands probably of semi-ink sticks all suspended. They look a bit like firecrackers tied together, drying even more.
24:29Yoko Nishina:I usually go for six months. The longest, maybe 100 years.
24:36Kenro Izue:No. Are there some inks drying here that have been drying for 100 years?
24:43Yoko Nishina:He said the longest one is for 50 years in this room.
24:48Kenro Izue:And after maturing for potentially half a century or more, we find some of those sumi ink sticks, carefully painted with gold, red and blue, waiting for us in the shop. The ink stick which Yoko has decided to buy has a special meaning attached to it because of its age.
25:06Yoko Nishina:Yeah, I want to buy this because it's made 60 years ago. I like it because it's like my age. It could be great, but I would not know before I tried.
25:22Kenro Izue:And I noticed you had some really big sheets of paper, enormous ones. Are those for a particular project?
25:29Yoko Nishina:I always have many projects, but now I really concentrate on my personal project. That is my 60th celebration exhibition.
25:44Kenro Izue:Why is the 60th birthday so important in Japanese culture?
25:49Yoko Nishina:When we turn 60 years old, we say we are reborn. Have you ever heard about the 10 heavenly stems and the 12 earthly branches?
26:01Kenro Izue:I haven't. Is that like a sort of signs of the zodiac or something like that?
26:07Yoko Nishina:Yeah, because when we were born, we belonged to the particular branch. And after 60 years, this branch comes back. I want to express everything what I learned for 60 years it's like my tale of my history
26:29Kenro Izue:Would you mind showing me some of the work you're doing? It must be really different working on a bigger scale it looks like it must be more physical Of course, yeah
26:38Yoko Nishina:I use the whole body big movement
26:51Kenro Izue:so you're moving your weight forwards and backwards and you suddenly painted it looks like the entire floor and I noticed there were some moments where you really dotted the brush
27:03Yoko Nishina:down and splashed yeah sometimes I do splash you know see this brush the length of hair is such a lung means I can open the hair or I can close the hair. I can press more and I can do lighter. That's permit you to express richer. Because this world is impermanent, I want to live moment by moment and calligraphy teaches me living at the moment. Doing calligraphy means It's just writing once. You cannot go back.
27:46Kenro Izue:How do you feel about what you've created here? Do you think this is the kind of thing that you would be happy to include in your 60th birthday exhibition?
27:56Yoko Nishina:Yes, I think so. Writing this poem should be the achievement of my life work.
28:05Kenro Izue:You've been listening to master Japanese calligrapher Yoko Nishina in the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service. Produced and presented by me, Rosa Johnston-Flint. The executive producer was Paula McGrath. Before Achilles found glory and Odysseus eventually found his way home, someone had to compose the Iliad and Odyssey. But was their credited author, Homer, even real? Hi, I'm Greg Jenner, host of You're Dead to Me the comedy show that takes history seriously and we are travelling back to 8th century BCE to trace the origins of the Iliad and Odyssey epic poems that became backbones of Western literature Join me and my fantastic guests as we unpack the stories of ancient Greek culture war and triumph and have a laugh while we do it Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts Thank you, bye!
From the publisher
Yoko Nishina likes to use black Japanese Sumi ink in her calligraphy work because of the variety of colours , from blues through to browns. Craftsmen still use traditional methods to create the ink from vegetable oil lamps with wicks made of reeds. She creates both large and small works - and is collaborating with photographer Kenro Izue for an exhibition in Osaka - as well as preparing a special exhibition for her upcoming 60th birthday, an age which is considered a "re-birth" in Japanese culture. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from In the Studio, exploring the processes of the world’s most creative people.
