On December 28, 2005 the world lost one of Japan’s preeminent practitioners of traditional Japanese art when Kobara Ranseki Sensei passed away in San Francisco. Kobara Sensei, acknowledged in Asia and the USA as perhaps the greatest shodo artist outside of Japan, was 81 years old.
The Birth of an Artist
He was born Kobara Seiji on December 24, 1924 in Shimane Prefecture, Mino County, Japan. Coming from a long line of Buddhist priests, his father was the priest of Myorenji Temple. Like his forefathers, Kobara Seiji also trained to become a reverend. While he was devoted to Buddhism, as a young man he found a second passion—shodo, the art of Japanese brush calligraphy. Shodo is one of the most ancient Japanese art forms. More than writing with a brush, it overlaps into ink painting and has elements in common with Western abstract art. Today scores of people practice shodo as meditation and artistic expression, rather than merely studying it as a system of writing.
Kobara Seiji became a student of the famed calligraphic artist Fukuzawa Seiran Sensei, who taught an old and venerable style of calligraphy at Kyoto University. Fukuzawa Sensei emphasized the study of the Shin So Sen-Ji-Mon, a very old 1000-character classic brushed by the Chinese monk/calligrapher Chiei.
After World War II times were hard all over Japan, with people having little time or money for artistic pursuits. As the result, Kobara Seiji was Fukuzawa Sensei’s only private student, and he visited his home for exclusive one-on-one training each day. Eventually, Fukuzawa Sensei gave his sole student the name Ranseki, which means an “Indigo Blue Stone,” and which included the “ran” character from his own pen name. (The bestowing of gago, special names used in art, is common in a number of Japanese disciplines, and it indicates that a student has come into his or her own as an artist.) In time, Kobara Ranseki would receive a Shihan-Dai teaching certificate from Fukuzawa Sensei, the highest ranking in his school of calligraphy.
Leaving Japan
In 1947, Kobara Sensei wasn’t just studying Buddhism and shodo. He was working in the prosecutor’s office in Kyoto. Always interested in new horizons, however, Kobara Sensei decided to leave his prosperous ancestral temple and take a daring and uncertain path by moving to the USA in 1950. He enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle and studied at the Seattle Buddhist Church. After graduating, he transferred to the Buddhist Church of San Francisco in 1954.
In 1960, Reverend Kobara once again set out on a new path in life when he retired from his church position and began a profession with Japan Airlines. As usual, he was successful at his new job, a career lasting 31 years until his retirement in 1991.
Founding Ranseki Sho Juku Style Calligraphy
During his professional life with the Buddhist Church of San Francisco, Reverend Kobara was informed that there was nobody skilled enough to paint the calligraphy of Japanese names for tombstones in a Japanese cemetery in Colma, California. Owing to his advanced experience in shodo, he was the natural choice, and he brushed characters that were engraved on over 150 stone markers. His skill was so obvious that he was soon asked to teach calligraphy in San Francisco, where he founded the Ranseki Sho Juku (“Ranseki Calligraphy School”) in 1966. (This same year he also became the Director of the San Francisco branch of the Urasenke school of tea ceremony.)
Over time, he evolved his unique version of orthodox Japanese calligraphic art, which is characterized as Ranseki Ryu shodo or Ranseki Sho Juku shodo. In 1975, he started teaching in Oakland, California at the Wanto Shodo-Kai (“East Bay Shodo Association”), and several years later, he began teaching in Palo Alto. In 1977, he became the co-founder (with Ueno Chikushu Sensei) of the Kokusai Shodo Bunka Koryu Kyokai—the “International Japanese Calligraphy and Cultural Exchange Association”—that is headquartered in Urayasu, with members throughout Japan, China, and the USA. Acting as Vice President, Kobara Sensei helped to oversee the esteemed Kokusai Shodo-ten, or “International Shodo Exhibition,” that takes place annually in Japan.
You can learn more about Ranseki Sho Juku calligraphy in the book The Japanese Way of the Artist by H. E. Davey.
