Inside Dōmyō, the long-established kumihimo braiding house on a stone-paved lane in Kagurazaka, visitors usually come and go in search of braided cords. On this day, though, a corner of the shop had quietly filled with the smell of paper and ink. Tachibana Satsuki had come to write yose-moji — the bold, boxed lettering used on playbills and signage at yose, the traditional theatres where rakugo, kōdan, and manzai are performed — here, in a room that had nothing to do with her usual work. On the table lay several brushes with short bristles, a red seal resting beside them. Tachibana's actual workspace is neither a studio nor a rehearsal hall, but a single room in her home in a Tokyo residential neighborhood — a room that still carries the signs of daily life, and that transforms into a place for writing yose-moji each time a commission arrives. Yose-moji, guided by an unusual rule of leaving almost no blank space, has evolved as a living form of culture ever since yose itself took shape in the Edo period. Three days a week she works as a company employee; the rest of the time, her home becomes her workshop. Tachibana's yose-moji exists in the space between these two lives.
For this interview, we asked Tachibana Satsuki — a writer of yose-moji in the Tachibana school — about the history behind the style: how it emerged as one branch of Edo-period lettering, and how it changed its form through the Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa eras. We also asked about her six years of training while working as a company employee, the path to receiving her professional name, her almost coincidental meeting with her teacher, and how she relates to her brushes, ink, and paper. From yose-moji appearing in places seemingly far from any yose — a professional wrestling match card, a festival banner in her hometown of Atami — to the surprised expressions of participants in her workshops, this interview traces the world of yose-moji through the eyes of one person who writes it.
This is a style whose finished beauty is said to come through even to those who cannot read it. What does it hold onto, then, as it is written? We trace its outline here, in Tachibana's own words.
The path that led Tachibana to yose-moji was not a straight one.
Toguri: How did writing play a part in your life from childhood through your student years?
Tachibana: As a child — like many in my generation — I started taking calligraphy lessons. That was how I first grew familiar with holding a brush and writing characters in ink. I kept it up for years, and then, as an adult, I came to love rakugo. Rakugo and yose-moji go together almost as a set, so that was how I came to know about yose-moji. A workshop I happened to attend became the occasion that got me writing it myself, and it was there that I met my teacher, which led to my taking up formal study with them.
Rakugo became the doorway through which the distance between her and yose-moji slowly closed.
Toguri: As you spent time in the world of rakugo, what was it about yose-moji that drew you in?
Tachibana: It wasn't the lettering itself that drew me in from the start. I had always liked cultural things — I had watched kabuki since my student days, and had a vague interest in art and traditional performing arts — and yose-moji was something I happened to come across along the way, if I'm honest. I only really fell for the lettering itself after I began writing it.
The day she attended that workshop would turn out to decide the direction of the rest of her life.
Toguri: Is there anything you remember from that first workshop?
Tachibana: It was a workshop held as part of a rakugo event, so I joined in more as an extension of having fun than anything serious. There were so many people there that at first I couldn't even find a seat. Someone kind offered to switch places with me, and all I managed to write was a single horizontal line. I wasn't struck by anything in particular at the time — it was simply enjoyable.
Toguri: Even so, what made you decide to keep going afterward?
Tachibana: After the workshop, I didn't go on to study on my own. Then, by chance, I came across a call for "successors" to Edo-period lettering styles, including yose-moji, put out as part of an Arakawa Ward program, and I thought, "Oh, that's the thing I tried back then." With the deadline closing in, I found myself drawn to it — being accepted wasn't guaranteed just because they were recruiting, but I thought, "if I found it interesting, there's no harm in raising my hand," and applied with that kind of light feeling.
Only after applying did she notice a coincidence that felt almost like fate.
Toguri: I understand the instructor at that first workshop turned out to be the very teacher you went on to study under.
Tachibana: Yes. I only realized it after applying for the "successor" program. I remembered that I had taken home a shikishi board my teacher had written as a gift at that workshop, so I dug it out of storage and checked the seal on it — and sure enough, it was the same person. I thought there might really be some kind of connection at work.
But the days that followed were not simply calm ones. A life spent moving between two identities — company employee and yose-moji writer — had begun.
Toguri: While training as a company employee, were there any gaps or surprises you experienced?
Tachibana: It felt like stepping into two completely separate worlds at once — holding down a company job while also training in lettering. Beyond writing, my teacher also organized rakugo gatherings and did work around that world, and I was told, "Seeing that world is part of your training too," so I was sometimes shown what happens behind the scenes. It was nerve-wracking, but exciting too. In ordinary life you never have occasion to call anyone "teacher," so even saying the word out loud felt embarrassing at first, and I think I was far too tense and stiff about the whole thing in those early days. My senior apprentice was a big presence for me, and taught me a great deal about how to navigate that particular kind of hierarchy. Even so, I still had few chances to interact with people further into the performing-arts world beyond that, and I felt — and still feel — a lot of uncertainty, and I've made plenty of mistakes. That's something I still think of as an ongoing challenge.
Toguri: I understand you also studied art history in graduate school. Is there anything about the appeal of yose-moji that you can see precisely because of that "outside" perspective?
Tachibana: In university, I studied the history of Chinese painting. I had originally hoped to find work connected to art, but that kind of thing doesn't happen to order. Even so, I've always wanted to work in a way that draws on everything I've learned and experienced. When I was studying art history, I was on the side that looked at a finished work and had opinions about it — and now, as someone who writes, I want to stay conscious of that same perspective. As digital tools and AI keep developing, I think constantly about how to convey the appeal of handwritten lettering, and I want to use what I've learned and experienced to help more people notice and feel that appeal.
We also asked about the specifics of her training, and the path to being granted her professional name.
Toguri: What does the training itself actually involve, step by step?
Tachibana: Once you can write horizontal and vertical strokes, and have gotten reasonably good at the kanji numerals, you move into practicing ordinary kanji. My teacher would write a model for me to copy, and once I was more or less managing that, I'd switch brush sizes and test whether I could still write the same way. After that comes poster size — composing an entire rakugo flyer or playbill in yose-moji. That's where it gets hard, because a sense of layout becomes essential. When you actually try it, things don't come together the way you pictured them, they're hard to read, and you redo them — over and over.
Because every character in yose-moji is written to fill its frame completely, an inexperienced hand can easily leave the whole composition looking cluttered. It's this that makes the layout and spacing work — arranging and balancing characters within that frame — so essential.
Toguri: Can you tell us how you felt when you received your name?
Tachibana: I trained for six years through Arakawa Ward's Takumi Ikusei Jigyō, a craftsperson-training program, and right up until that period was ending, there hadn't even been any talk of whether I'd receive a name. Without a name, I couldn't work professionally. I spent that time not knowing what would happen to me, but fortunately, just before the program ended, I received approval from the ichimon — the group of practitioners under one school's name — and was given my name. It was half disbelief and half relief. After that, I had my ohirome — a formal debut — at the New Year's gathering where everyone studying yose-moji comes together.
Even after receiving her name, most of her work still happens in that single room at home. Outside her days as a company employee, her living space turns straight into her workspace, and the job she meant to finish by a certain hour rarely goes according to plan — that, she says, is simply her day-to-day life now.
What, then, is yose-moji at its core? The more one asks, the clearer it becomes that this is no mere decorative script.
Toguri: Let me ask again directly — what is yose-moji?
Tachibana: As the name suggests, yose-moji is the lettering used at yose — the venues where traditional Japanese performing arts such as rakugo, kōdan, and manzai are staged. So it's lettering tied specifically to that place. Which means that the moment you see it, you know at a glance: "ah, that's a yose."
Trace the origins of this lettering back far enough, and you arrive at the signboard culture of the Edo period.
Toguri: How did yose-moji come into being, and what was the background behind it?
Tachibana: Yose-moji isn't the only one of its kind — Sumō-ji and Kantei-ryū, the kabuki lettering, were also created as signboard scripts, each against the backdrop of worlds that had grown hugely popular since the Edo period. There was already a style called Oie-ryū, used as the official script for government documents in that era, and under its influence each of these scripts was established as something newly suited to its own kind of signboard. Yose-moji, in particular, came after Kantei-ryū already existed in kabuki, and developed under its strong influence into a style better suited to the yose, eventually settling into the form we see today.
Toguri: What sets yose-moji apart from other Edo-lettering styles, Kantei-ryū for instance?
Tachibana: What they share is this: filling the frame completely, writing with an upward slant, and keeping the strokes as black and unbroken as possible. All three — Sumō-ji, Kantei-ryū, and yose-moji — carry this in common, out of a wish that a venue would draw as full a house as possible, rising ever upward like those strokes. Kantei-ryū carries something of dance in it, so it has more curves and twists worked in, whereas yose-moji holds to straight lines. Not simply straight, though — the lines themselves feel full and generous, with something of bamboo's springy flexibility in them. Another feature is that when writing a horizontal stroke, the brush is set down again to add a firm stop at the end. There's a warmth to it, but also a kind of cleanness, and I think that mood overlaps with the world of the traditional spoken stories told at a yose.
Toguri: In the Edo period, when this lettering is said to have originated, what place did writing itself hold at the time?
Tachibana: Both yose-moji and Kantei-ryū only took their present form much later, but most people must have been able to read lettering by then. Given that, there was probably also a sense that ordinary writing just wasn't enough. It was an age when culture was rising up from the common people themselves, so — though this is only my guess — I imagine people's sensibilities at the time were quite sharp. That same urge to improve on things, to think "wouldn't it be better done this way," that ran through kabuki, sumo, and yose and everything around them, must have found its way into the lettering too.
The turning point in its development came at the end of the Edo period. The number of yose kept growing, playbill production shifted from handwriting to woodblock printing, and the trade grew substantial enough to stand on its own as a business. Then the era shifted into Meiji.
Toguri: What turning points did the lettering used at yose go through after the Meiji era began?
Tachibana: Today there are only around four yose left in Tokyo, but at its peak, I'm told, there was one in nearly every neighborhood. That many yose meant that many more posters were needed. The way playbills were made shifted from handwriting to woodblock printing, to the point that a trade specializing in yose playbills could stand on its own. The lettering that would eventually lead to today's yose-moji was still called Bira-ji at that point, but I think that was the major turning point that made this kind of lettering a familiar part of the yose.
Toguri: Could you tell us more about how yose playbills came to be produced in even greater volume?
Tachibana: Thanks to the popularity of ukiyo-e, woodblock printing technology was already well developed by this period, and the production of hikifuda — the advertising flyers of the day — had also advanced. Against that background, the design of yose playbills was refined, and a method called Hankō-bira was devised, in which only the plate carrying a performer's name was swapped out like a stamp — a shift that made playbill production considerably more efficient.
Toguri: Once Taishō began and new entertainments like film became more common, was there any effect on this?
Tachibana: As for yose playbills, I think some did start to be made by methods other than woodblock printing or handwriting, but I don't believe the tradition was affected all that much by it — it carried on much as before.
But the prosperity did not last. Earthquake, and then war, would take away the trade of the biraya — the tradespeople who hand-produced yose playbills before yose-moji was formalized — altogether.
Toguri: Could you tell us how Tachibana Ukon came to revive this lettering once the Shōwa era began?
Tachibana: The biraya had been the ones making all those playbills, but the earthquake and the war wiped out the biraya trade itself. Tachibana Ukon had originally been a hanashika — another term for a rakugo storyteller — and as a young performer he'd sometimes been sent on errands to a biraya, where he watched them writing playbills. He genuinely wanted to learn it, but was told, "this isn't something you learn," so he picked it up on his own. Then, as one biraya after another went out of business, a time came when Bira-ji itself had almost fallen out of use. After that, Yanagitei Saraku the Fifth, a senior figure in the rakugo world, suggested that he write the signboard lettering for the newly built Shinjuku Suehirotei, and he began writing yose signboards from there. He gave up his original work as a rakugo performer, took on the full range of work around the yose, wrote Bira-ji, and reshaped it into the more efficient form that is today's yose-moji. If Tachibana Ukon hadn't carried it forward, I don't think this lettering would exist at all — that's how significant it was.
Toguri: Where does the Tachibana school stand within yose-moji as a whole?
Tachibana: Yose-moji is, in effect, the Tachibana school. Since Tachibana Ukon established it, it's called the Tachibana school, with him as its founding head.
From the signboard culture of Edo, through the biraya of Meiji, to its revival under Tachibana Ukon in Shōwa, this lettering has survived down to the present — one could say it owes its continued life, if barely, to the devotion of a single craftsperson.
Ask about the design side of yose-moji, and it becomes clear that it holds together an Edo-period good-luck practice and a deliberate calculation for visual beauty.
Toguri: Could you tell us about the design features of Tachibana-school yose-moji, and the meaning carried within them?
Tachibana: You write to fill the frame completely. Essentially, you lay out the space and then fill it with characters, and that one allotted space is treated as an audience seat to be filled. So you write with as little blank space as possible. Then there's the upward slant of the strokes — this is an engikatsugi, a good-luck practice meant to bring good fortune, wishing that the performance itself, and both audience and performer, will rise ever upward. And finally, keeping whatever blank space remains perfectly even. That evenness is what makes it look so beautiful.
Toguri: I'd also like to ask about the technical side — how does this differ from calligraphy?
Tachibana: Compared to calligraphy, the brush itself is different, first of all. Using a brush with a short tip is one of the biggest distinguishing features — you press its whole side flat against the paper and drive it forward with a steady, even force. And it's not enough just to draw one clean, sharp line — there has to be a subtle expression within that line itself. That, I think, is where the real technique comes in.
Toguri: I'd like to ask about how you use your hands as well — what part of the body does the actual writing?
Tachibana: Drawing an even line matters most, so I tilt the brush rather than holding it upright, and I make a point of writing with the whole body. If you lift your hand the way you would in calligraphy, it's easy to waver, and a single line ends up uneven in thickness. To get an even line, you need to keep everything from the elbow to the hand holding the brush as stable as possible, and the idea is to write through the movement of the body rather than trying to do it with just the fingers.
The road to mastering that even line is anything but short.
Toguri: I understand that training includes practicing the kanji numerals from one to nine. Even though they're numerals, many of the names you actually write wouldn't include any numbers at all — so why practice them?
Tachibana: Since writing a straight line is the first requirement in yose-moji, you start with horizontal and vertical strokes, and then move on to the kanji numerals. The reason for the numerals is that they contain all the basic hippō — the brushstroke techniques fundamental to writing. One, two, and three need only horizontal strokes, but four brings in a vertical stroke and a corner as well. Five introduces a diagonal, and six is where you first encounter a sweeping release stroke. Almost every step forward brings a new piece of brush technique with it, each of which turns up again, in one place or another, when you write all kinds of other kanji. Nearly every hippō is packed into those nine numerals, so the thinking goes: if you can't write them, you can't write kanji. In short, it's the foundation.
Toguri: In an age when you can type characters on a computer or smartphone, where do you think the value lies in deliberately practicing with a brush?
Tachibana: The lettering we write isn't only for conveying information — the lettering itself is a form of expression. And there's meaning in choosing to write it with a brush, because there are things only brush lettering can express. You can probably feel that appeal more fully by actually trying it yourself. Using a brush, loading it with ink, and writing characters on paper is such a simple act, and yet it turns out surprisingly hard to write exactly the way you intend. "The model looks like this, but no matter what I do I can't write it that way," "it runs over the edge," "the balance is off" — you come to understand all of that little by little as you keep writing. It's such a simple thing to do, and yet so much confusion comes out of it — you have to draw a clean line, and the balance keeps drifting to one side anyway. The act itself is simple, but all kinds of conflict arise inside you as you do it, and that's the part I find interesting.
From the kanji numerals, training eventually leads to lettering written for actual commissions, and then into the everyday rhythm of work coming in.
Toguri: What are the most common ways that work comes to you?
Tachibana: It's mostly through connections. Sometimes people contact me directly through the email address I've posted on social media, and sometimes it comes through someone who introduced me before, who then tells someone else, "I had that person write for me," and the request comes from there. Most often it's performers or people organizing rakugo gatherings, and after that, the most common case is people opening a new shop who want lettering precisely because it's such an unusual style — restaurants, especially. Depending on what's wanted, I take on the work either as a physical piece, as digital data, or all the way through to the finished product.
Toguri: What's on your mind as you finish a single piece?
Tachibana: More than anything, I want to write lettering that's confident and good-looking enough to properly lift up whatever occasion it's for. In yose-moji, it's considered fine to go back and touch up a rough edge or an off balance with another stroke of the brush, but lately I've come to prefer finishing a piece on the strength of a single stroke, as much as possible. There's nothing wrong with correcting it, but overdoing it can drain the vitality out of the piece, and it's easy to go too far. Worrying over every little thing and fixing it also takes time. These days, I feel that a certain decisiveness is necessary if I want my technique to keep improving.
Toguri: I'd like to ask about your relationship with your tools as well.
Tachibana: The brush I use most is one made specifically for yose-moji, but in general, any brush with a short tip will do — a kumade-fude, a brush originally used for Japanese-style painting, works fine. People often say that a brush is something to be "raised" through use, not simply chosen off the shelf, and depending on how you handle it, the same brush can become harder or easier to use — it varies a great deal from one writer to the next. So my feeling leans more toward raising a brush into something workable than toward being particular about the tool itself — what matters more to me is being able to manage with whatever brush I have.
Toguri: And what about ink and paper?
Tachibana: In yose-moji, you don't grind your own ink — you use ready-made liquid ink. Partly that's because I want a dark, even ink with no unevenness, and partly because yose-moji is used on things like posters and flyers — kiemono, items meant to be used and then discarded — so it's simply more practical to use ready-made ink than to spend time grinding a dark one. For paper, I use a thick, high-quality stock that's smooth to the touch and doesn't let heavy ink bleed through to the back easily. When writing on a shikishi board, how much the ink bleeds or scratches varies a great deal depending on the paper, so I do choose paper to some extent that won't bleed even with plenty of ink and won't scratch too much — though there's a limit to what you can know without actually trying it. Shikishi pieces are often made as finished works in their own right, so I write them with a lot of care, trying not to make a mess or a mistake.
But the very environment that sustains these tools is quietly changing.
Toguri: Is there anything about the future of your tools that concerns you?
Tachibana: When it comes to the larger brushes, the right kind of bamboo for the handle simply isn't available anymore. I expect it will eventually be replaced with something else, but since I haven't used it yet, I'm curious how different it will be. The ink is changing too — the composition of the raw materials has shifted from before, so you sometimes get ink that's too glossy or that dries differently than it used to. That's just something that can't be helped, so figuring out how to work around it is a challenge I expect to face going forward.
Most commissions are tied to yose and the performing arts, but every so often a request comes in from somewhere entirely unexpected.
Toguri: I imagine you deliver work as digital data fairly often. How do you feel, as the person who makes it, about that compared to the kind of variation that comes through handwriting?
Tachibana: Once I hand over data, it sometimes bothers me that I don't know exactly where or how it will end up being used. If something written small gets blown up large, or something written large gets shrunk down, the difference in scale can leave an inconsistent impression, so I make a point of asking how it will be used before I write it. If the scale ends up too far from what I intended, it can turn out differently than I meant it to, so that's something I'm careful about when delivering as data.
Toguri: How do you maintain an objective perspective on your own work?
Tachibana: Yose-moji follows a form that's fairly fixed, but one's own character still comes through in it regardless. That's hard to notice in your own work, so I make a point of always trying to look at it objectively. For instance, I photograph a piece once it's done and look at it on a screen, and I try, where I can, to put some distance between myself and it, and to actually go see it in the place it's being used. Looking only at my own writing makes it hard to see clearly, so I also make a point of studying my teacher's lettering, and reference material from Master Ukon. I also try to watch my teacher writing, hold that alongside the feeling of writing it myself, and notice the difference between the two. Wherever yose-moji can be seen, I make sure to look at it — whether it's something I wrote or something written by someone else in the ichimon — and take something away from it.
It's precisely because staying faithful to the form is fundamental that the occasional unusual commission leaves such a strong impression.
Toguri: Is there a particularly unusual job that's stayed with you?
Tachibana: This one wasn't really a job so much as something I made happen myself, out of personal interest — I happen to enjoy watching professional wrestling. There was a fan project along the lines of "we'll make your wish come true," and I applied saying, "This is the kind of lettering I write — I'd love the chance to write something related to wrestling!" Whether it was because it was unusual, or because they found it interesting, I was chosen, and got to write a match card. It was a completely different kind of show from a yose, and people with no connection to yose at all got to see that card — some even told me, "that's good lettering" — which made it a happy experience.
Toguri: I understand there's another episode that left an impression on you.
Tachibana: At Kinomiya Shrine in my hometown of Atami, there's a ritual called Gohōren. It's a custom centered on local men who have reached their unluckiest year by the traditional count, and one of my former classmates had reached that age. Each generation taking part in the ritual is given a name, and they used lettering I had written for the characters marking theirs. Being able to take part in that local ritual alongside my old classmates, through my own lettering, is one of the things from recent memory that has made me especially happy.
Having her lettering used in different settings seems to carry more meaning than a simple detour.
Toguri: What meaning do you find in working in settings outside the yose like that?
Tachibana: I think it's good that it can be seen by all kinds of people, not just within one limited setting. You can sense other possibilities, or notice things you hadn't noticed before. That might become a reason to broaden what I do, and I imagine it can also help, in its own way, with carrying this technique forward and passing it on.
Alongside this broadening of her work, though, Tachibana faces challenges of her own.
Toguri: Is there anything you feel, as a woman working in this field?
Tachibana: I'm often asked what it's like being a woman in this field, but I don't think about it very much myself — though people do sometimes look at my lettering and say it has a feminine feel to it. There was a time when I wanted to write with a somewhat bolder image, but now I've come to think that what I do is fine as it is, and I'd like to make the most of however being a woman shows up in my own way of writing, as part of my own character. There are fifteen people in the Tachibana ichimon altogether right now, and four of them are women. That's not a small number at all, and I don't feel that gender has much to do with it in this world.
Toguri: What challenges does yose-moji face today, and what would you like to do going forward?
Tachibana: One is how to convey the value of handwritten lettering. And as I mentioned, there are fifteen of us in the ichimon right now, twelve of whom were direct students of Tachibana Ukon. I do wonder what will become of the ichimon's activities going forward. For both of these challenges, I think reaching out beyond our own circle is going to matter a great deal, so I'd like to keep working in a way that lets as many people as possible enjoy this world — broadly for those just encountering it, and more deeply for those who take a real interest.
What is it that people who come to a workshop actually encounter through yose-moji? How does an hour or two spent by someone holding a brush for the first time look through the eyes of a person who has walked a training path spanning years? Listening to her talk about it, you start to see a craftsperson's gaze overlapping with the memory of her own earliest days holding a brush.
Toguri: Could you describe what a workshop involves?
Tachibana: After a brief explanation of what kind of lettering yose-moji is, we start with practicing basic strokes, just to get people used to the brush. Once they've grown a little more comfortable with it, they choose a kanji they like, practice writing that character, and finish by making a clean final copy to take home.
Toguri: What do you want participants to feel through the experience?
Tachibana: I think most people rarely use a brush or write characters by hand at all these days, so I want them, first of all, to experience the feeling of what kind of movement produces what kind of line. And then, when the lettering doesn't come out as cleanly as they'd like, to move their hand while wondering why that is. I hope they can enjoy that whole process.
Toguri: Is there a comment you often hear from first-time participants?
Tachibana: I often hear people say that watching me write looked so smooth that they thought they could do it too, but when they actually tried it, it turned out to be really difficult. Unlike a pen, a brush isn't rigid all the way to the tip — the bristles are soft, almost like a small brush head, and unless you control that part well, you can't produce the line you intend.
Toguri: When visitors from abroad who don't normally write kanji take part, how does it differ from Japanese participants?
Tachibana: Japanese participants already have an image in their head of how a kanji is written, so they end up writing from that image. Even if I tell them, "make this part bigger, longer here," they can't quite let go of the kanji they already picture, and end up writing it short anyway. And that, oddly enough, often ends up looking off from a yose-moji point of view. Visitors from abroad, on the other hand, don't know kanji to begin with, so actually writing one may be difficult for them — but because they take in the character purely as a shape, what they produce sometimes ends up resembling yose-moji more closely.
Whether prior knowledge takes the lead, or the eye simply follows the shape it sees — that difference shows up directly at the tip of the brush. It may connect, in its own way, to Tachibana's daily habit of comparing her own lettering against her teacher's to keep an objective eye on her own work.
Toguri: Watching people during the workshop, is there anything you notice about participants?
Tachibana: Watching people practice one character at a time, the stroke written closest to the model tends to be the one that most resembles it. When I give them a point to focus on — "pay attention to this part next" — their attention concentrates there, and somewhere else falls apart instead. In the beginning, that repeats itself, and it can be frustrating. I've been through that myself, so I watch it happen with some sympathy for what they're feeling. On the other hand, some people take to it smoothly right away, and often it turns out they have a background in art or drawing — just by watching them write, you can tell what part of the model they're focused on and where their attention is going, and from that you can even start to imagine something of their character. It's said that handwriting reveals the person, and I think that's just as true of how someone approaches it — I find that interesting.
A participant holds the brush for only an hour or two, she says. And yet within that short span, a paradox emerges on its own — that concentrating too hard can cause things to fall apart, while the very first attempt often carries the most honest strength. That this surfaces so plainly, in so short a time, is what makes it interesting.
Toguri: What's the one thing you most want participants to take away from the experience?
Tachibana: That behind yose-moji lies the world of popular performing arts passed down since long ago — rakugo, kōdan — and that this lettering was born precisely because of that world. And beneath all of it, a taste that runs back to Edo. If people come away knowing that much, I'd be glad, since it's a rare opportunity, if they could feel something of that history and culture through the lettering itself.
Asked what makes the experience of yose-moji distinct even among Japan's many cultural traditions, she gave an answer that was somewhat unexpected.
Toguri: If there's something you can only experience through yose-moji, something unique to this particular setting, what do you think it is?
Tachibana: I've had visitors from abroad try this before, and I think the defining feature is that the finished piece looks beautiful even if you can't understand what the lettering means. Calligraphy has its own appeal, but yose-moji, through brushwork quite different from calligraphy, offers the pleasure and beauty of filling a space in balance. That's something you can feel even without being able to read the characters or understand their meaning, and it was really through visitors from abroad that I came to notice that appeal myself. It's a style of lettering unique to Japan, rooted in Japanese tradition, and I think its appeal comes through easily enough that anyone can enjoy trying it.
Yose-moji, it's said, is lettering that can be felt as beautiful even by those who cannot read it. Between the thick black strokes written to fill their frame, a narrow, even margin of blank space is left, and the finished piece alone is enough to catch the eye of anyone who sees it. What Tachibana spoke of with particular feeling was something no computer font can reproduce — the appeal of the brush's own trace, the path it had actually traveled. Born from the signboard lettering of Edo, carried through the biraya of Meiji, and revived in Shōwa by a single hanashika, this lettering still, even now, can only come into being through the body of the person writing it. Facing the challenge of finding successors, Tachibana nonetheless keeps carrying her lettering beyond the yose, to the edges of festivals and even a wrestling ring — and in that, she seems to point toward one very quiet way that a tradition can go on living. Moving between the days she spends as a company employee and the days she picks up her brush, Tachibana today, once again, turns to face a single sheet of paper.