Bokujinkai (墨人会, “People of the Ink,” est. 1952) is a Japanese calligraphy collective, research group, and exhibition society. It was founded by the calligraphers Shiryū Morita, Yūichi Inoue, Sōgen Eguchi, Yoshimichi Sekiya, and Bokushi Nakamura.
Although still active today, Bokujinkai remains best known for its activities in the 1950s, when its members helped advance avant-garde calligraphy (前衛書, zen’ei sho) or modern calligraphy (現代書, gendai sho) both in Japan and internationally.
History
Establishment Bokujinkai was established by Morita, Inoue, Eguchi, Yoshimichi, and Nakamura on January 5, 1952 at Ryōanji in Kyoto. All five members were students of the experimental calligrapher Sōkyū Ueda. The formation of Bokujinkai can be seen as a formal split from both the calligraphy establishment and from other avant-garde calligraphers.
Background and split from Keiseikai The formation of Bokujinkai was heavily influenced by the landscape of the Japanese calligraphy world in the years following the end of World War II. In general, since the Meiji period, calligraphy had been excluded from the realm of high art and was not included in official salon exhibitions until 1948. The general public saw it as old-fashioned and stagnant, and this reputation only solidified during the U.S. Occupation, when calligraphy was characterized as feudalistic and removed from educational curriculum.Kajiya, Kenji. “Modernized Differently: Avant-Garde Calligraphy and Art in Postwar Japan.” Conference Paper, M+ Matters: Postwar Abstraction in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Hong Kong, Hong Kong Arts Centre, June 28, 2014. This shocking public rejection of calligraphy during the Occupation on the one hand, combined with the hope promised by its admission into the salon on the other hand, catalyzed calligraphers, particularly the members of Bokujinkai, to proactively modernize calligraphy.
By the early postwar period in Japan, various innovative, modern styles of calligraphy had already crystallized: kindaishi bunsho (近代詩文書, calligraphy of modern poetry), shōjisūsho (少字数書, calligraphy of a few characters), and zen’ei sho (前衛書, avant-garde calligraphy increasingly divorced from written characters and their meanings). The growth of zen’ei sho upset conservative calligraphers in the calligraphy establishment, and created a tense, ongoing conflict between traditional and experimental calligraphers. The founders of Bokujinkai believed that avant-garde calligraphers had become too mired in this conflict, and as a result, there was not enough attention being paid to the future of calligraphy.
All five of the initial Bokujinkai members had been part of another avant-garde calligraphy group known as Keiseikai (奎星会, “Group of the Megrez Star”), which was founded in November 1940 by Ueda, Morita, and another of Ueda's students, Sesson Uno. Before World War II, Ueda and his teacher Hidai Tenrai had been early proponents of experimental calligraphy. In the early postwar years, however, the five Bokujinkai founders felt that Ueda was too invested in winning conflicts with the calligraphy establishment, and that this myopic focus was preventing necessary international connections and opportunities for Japanese calligraphers. They also thought that Ueda was still conforming to the traditional hierarchies of the calligraphy world by adopting an “authoritarian” position over his students. Forming Bokujinkai was thus an opportunity to emancipate themselves from the master-student hierarchy and to begin working on their own as individual artists with global mindsets. At the same time, to the extent that much of Bokujinkai's experimental calligraphy, network of supporters in the art and calligraphy worlds, and monthly journals all originated with Keiseikai, Bokujinkai may be considered an offshoot and development of that group.
Manifesto Bokujinkai's manifesto was published in the inaugural issue of their journal Bokujin in April 1952. The manifesto declared the current practice of calligraphy “impoverished” due to its long isolation from modern art, and called for opening up the world of calligraphy to outside interests and artists, especially those outside of Japan: “We fully realize that we now stand at a pivotal moment: can the art of calligraphy, which has been guarding its long tradition in one corner of the Orient, revitalize itself as a true contemporary art, or will the very category [of calligraphy] become extinguished by being completely absorbed by progressive artists?” Finally, the group proclaimed independence from any extant calligraphy group, arguing that it was only by separating themselves from “existing institutions” that they could pursue the path of the avant-garde.
Early activity Bokujinkai's early years may be characterized by their most experimental works and their greatest efforts to push the boundaries of calligraphy in Japan and abroad. Within Japan, the group focused on innovating the practice of calligraphy and expanding the field by collaborating with modern artists. For example, Bokujinkai hosted and participated in many roundtable discussions with modern artists and calligraphers to discuss the status of painting and calligraphy, both in Japan and in the West.
In further efforts to widen the audience of calligraphy, Bokujinkai also spent considerable effort in their early years on outreach to the Western art world. Morita sent copies of the group's monthly journal Bokubi to prominent galleries in New York and Paris. Bokujinkai was able to establish contact with prominent artists including Franz Kline, Pierre Alechinsky, Pierre Soulages, L. Alcopley, Georges Mathieu, and other artists who were working in Abstract Expressionist or Tachiste painting styles loosely comparably to calligraphy.
Bokujinkai's correspondence with Franz Kline was especially fruitful in the early 1950s. Morita featured Kline's paintings in the first issue of Bokubi in 1951, thus demonstrating his own commitment to the international expansion of calligraphy. Kline's paintings, despite being oil on canvas, consisted of bold black strokes on white grounds and appeared strikingly close to Bokujinkai's avant-garde calligraphy. Bokujinkai sent the first issue of Bokubi to Kline, who responded positively, and both parties continued to exchange periodicals and images of their works. Critics questioned the influence of calligraphy on Kline's work and vice versa, but it seems that both parties arrived at a similar visual expression around the same time. For Bokujinkai, the discovery of Kline's work and their friendly correspondence with him was a sign that calligraphy could achieve international artistic importance. As Kline's reputation in the U.S. grew, however, he began to distance himself from Bokujinkai and assert that his paintings were in fact quite different from Japanese calligraphy. This was likely due to a growing artistic nationalism surrounding Abstract Expressionism in New York, rather than a decisive break between Kline and Bokujinkai.
In addition to direct connection with artists, Bokujinkai's early efforts at international outreach yielded concrete results in the organization of several exhibitions at prominent international venues.
Later activity Most scholars divide Bokujinkai's early, internationally minded activities from their later, more insular calligraphic practice. By the 1960s, in response to growing dismissal and negative criticism from Western and Japanese critics, as well as explosive growth in avant-garde painting and installation, Bokujinkai members began to focus more on their own calligraphy and internal activities rather than global or even cross-genre outreach. Some founding members, including Eguchi, ended up quitting the group due to its increasingly hierarchical organization under Morita, which he felt negated the original goals of the group.
Today, the group maintains an active, stratified membership system and is led by calligraphers such as Sōsai Inada, a former student of Morita. In addition to internal group exhibitions and events, the group also conducts calligraphy research and publishes catalogues of former Bokujinkai members’ works.
Philosophy
Early interests
Avant-gardism Bokujinkai labeled themselves as “avant-garde,” but their notion of avant-gardism was different than avant-garde artists in Europe who attacked the very notion of art. Although many of the group member's early works blurred the line between calligraphy and painting, the group's intention was not to dismantle the field of calligraphy itself, but to legitimize calligraphy as a form of modern art equivalent to painting. The goal was not to reject tradition, but to embrace it and insist on its inherent overlaps with and relevance to modern art.
Bokujinkai's avant-gardism aligned more closely with European avant-gardism at the level of cultural and political critique. Their manifesto called for the democratization of the highly stratified calligraphic establishment in Japan, and they aspired to create a horizontal power structure within Bokujinkai.
Internationalization In their writings and roundtable discussions, Bokujinkai advocated for the sekai-sei (世界性, world relevance) of calligraphy. The group believed that international recognition was one way to prove to the calligraphy establishment that it needed to expand, innovate, and modernize in order to maintain its relevance.
Bokujiinkai's early efforts to achieve international connections with postwar European and American artists stemmed in part from a 1948 article written by Morita entitled “Like a Rainbow.” In the article Morita envisioned a metaphorical rainbow where the arc of Japanese calligraphy and the arc of European and American abstract painting could ultimately merge into a bridge spanning the globe. One of the key ways to achieve this vision, according to Morita, was to encourage an appreciation of calligraphy based primarily on its formal qualities, similar to painting. By celebrating the formal rather than the lexical qualities of calligraphy, foreign viewers who could not read Japanese could still appreciate calligraphy as an art, and this would open calligraphy to a greater international audience.
Bokujinkai's early global outreach was successful in part because it coincided in the U.S. and Europe with a postwar interest in Japanese art and aesthetics and the practice and philosophy of Zen. Bokujinkai's internationalizing philosophy was influenced by the work of scholars Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, Tsutomu Ijima, and D.T. Suzuki, all of whom believed that Zen thought, although native to Japan, could function as a global philosophy that might supersede Western modes of thought. Similarly, Bokujinkai saw their work as something capable of world relevance, but nonetheless rooted in fundamental philosophies of Japanese culture.
Form and style Morita was instrumental in codifying some of the formal artistic principles that inform calligraphy. In 1953, he first theorized that calligraphy was based on three broad properties: 1) time (both the duration required to read and to write the character with a brush), 2) space (the way the composition and quality of line filled the blank page), and 3) literary value (the written character). The first two properties overlapped with abstract painting, and the third property was what distinguished calligraphy from abstract painting. Bokujinkai members further theorized how calligraphic line and space might be different from line and space in oil paintings.
Bokujinkai members were also influenced both by primitivism in Euro-American modern art, and more specifically by Saburō Hasegawa’s theory of “Old Japan and New West.” As a result, in their early activities, they actively researched ancient and premodern Sino-Japanese calligraphy and incorporated formal elements of it into their own avant-garde practices.
Moji-sei