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Rubrica di Takayo

Gift from China, 1,000 Kanji:韓国や中国の教科書になっている千字文

Weekly Topic: Favourite book to read this season

Feb 4, 2024

Students often ask what materials they should use to practise outside of class. I would be the first to recommend the [The Thousand Character Poem] I am about to introduce.

The Thousand Character Poem (千字文) is long in Han script (漢文の長詩), all in 1000 different characters, which was commissioned by Emperor Wu of Liang of the Southern Dynasty (南朝梁時代の武帝) to the writer Zhou Xingzhi (周興嗣).

In 250 verses of four words each, the subtle emotional movements of human life are beautifully sung in rhyme. For example, here are the first four letters and their meanings.

天地玄黄 means that the sky is high and black and the earth is low and yellow. The darkness of heaven and earth is so dim with infinite expanse.

The Thousand Character Poem is in two different styles (kaisho and gyosh. Subsequently, several other thousand-character styles were created, such as the cursive thousand-character style and the standard thousand-character style. There is also the 'Four-Tai Thousand-Character Sentences'(四体千字文), in which thousand-character sentences are written and arranged in tensho(篆書), (隷書), kaisho(楷書) and sousho(草書).

The Hangul alphabet is now used, but before the founding of the country, Korea also had Kanji from China. In Korea, there is currently a movement towards a renewed appreciation of Chinese characters. Korean primary school students have even come to me for guidance through online lessons, using the Thousand Character Poem. The thousand-character writing is now booming, and I would like this book to be used in the learning process of shodo. The Thousand Character Poem was written by various shodo teachers in the world. They are all excellent books. A visit to a second-hand bookshop in Tokyo Jimbocho for a recent column may lead you to one of your own.

Discover 5 Shodo spot in Tokyo/Yokohama 書家のための東京エリアおススメショップ５選 | Tutor Takayo's Column - Cafetalk

Source: (1) Thousand-character sentence - Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%83%E5%AD%97%E6%96%87.(2) What is Senjimon (千字文)? Meaning and usage - Cotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%8D%83%E5%AD%97%E6%96%87-88326.(3) Senjimon, by Kitamukai Unchiku - Familiarisation with the classics | National Institute of Japanese Literature. https://www.nijl.ac.jp/koten/kokubun1000/1000kato-sino.html.(4)30-2_06LEE.pdf (ritsumei.ac.jp)(5)Santaisennjimon:Gado Ono ISBN978-4-8373-0452(6)Senjimon: Kanju Ogawa ISBN4-00-332201-0