Construction of Iroha (Four-part Series)

The Iroha, a classical Japanese poem that is a perfect pangram (containing each character of the Japanese syllabary exactly once), was an enduring theme for the calligrapher Chiyokura Oshu. Wearing swimming shorts, tabi socks, and a knotted headband, he spread a 30-meter-long sheet of paper across a gymnasium floor. Holding a brush as tall as himself, he vigorously traversed the paper to produce Iroha works of mind-boggling scale, not just once but many times. His works are characterized by a powerful sense of physicality and dynamism, and the characters are imbued with force that makes them seem to continue evolving even after drying on the paper. In this work, the Iroha starts off with a vigorous undulation, the characters seeming to yearn so intensely for their own sounds that they become nearly unreadable, then converging dramatically toward the finale. This masterwork, created when the artist was more than 70 years of age, represents a pinnacle of his engagement with the Iroha theme. (N.R.)