What is the proper term for the use of archaic kanji?

Question

I noticed that in various works of Japanese art, the artists sign their work with a seal whose contents range from fairly regular kanji to very abstract variations of kanji. I have also seen it used in calligraphy, as shown in the example below.

I heard that this is called "seal script", but no one has been able to point me to any more information on it beyond Wikipedia. Is there a name for this form of writing and better resources for learning about it?

Photograph of a piece of Japanese artwork with calligraphy in an unknown script.

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 12 '15 at 14:59

6

The kanji script that you see in the first (rightmost) line of your picture, as well as in the seal at the bottom left is called 篆書体【てんしょたい】.

edited Oct 12 '15 at 14:59

senshin

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answered Mar 05 '12 at 15:00

I don't know what that means, but the romanization for the word I provided is "tenshotai". I just checked and saw that in English, it is called "seal script" or "small seal script". – Mar 05 '12 at 15:18
zhuànshū is the romanization of the Chinese word spelled the same, tenshotai is the romanization of the Japanese (on-)reading. – Mar 05 '12 at 15:26
4

篆書体 read as てんしょたい is perfectly accepted as a Japanese word. – Mar 05 '12 at 15:34
I guess in most of the cases, they have a counterpart within the characters used today. They are just different font styles. – Mar 05 '12 at 16:30
1

Yes, they actually are kanji, just in a different "font." You can see a lot of the difference as homeomorphism, if that helps... to change the metaphor a bit, they preserve the essence of the "graph" (edges and nodes) but alter its visual expression. For example, the 木 radical at the top there looks more like ＊. (Also note that often older forms are used, thus 艸　instead of 艹.) – Matt Mar 05 '12 at 23:24
"I don't want to be using Chinese terminology to describe Japanese artwork and vice versa" -- The terminology of Chinese characters, like the characters themselves, came from China. Use of Chinese terminology (with Japanese on readings) is correct and appropriate. Kun readings would be bizarre and probably incomprehensible. – Bathrobe Mar 08 '12 at 13:14
@Bathrobe - Cleaned up the comments a bit to avoid prolonged discussion, but that comment relates back to a very niche discussion that I've been having about Japanese and Chinese artwork elsewhere. – Mar 12 '12 at 19:11

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 12 '15 at 15:45

It is 篆書 (Mandarin //tʂʷan ʂu//), and more precisely it is 小篆 (Mandarin //ɕʲɑu tʂʷan//).

篆 means write, seal
書 means write/writing, books etc.
小 means tiny, small.

There exists another kind of 篆書 is called 大篆 (大 "big, huge"). The Chinese written in the top-right corner are 枝頭覓春.

枝 branch, twig
頭 head, top
覓 find, search, seek, get
春 spring (the season)

Today 篆書 is no longer used in daily hand writing but in artworks only, for example calligraphy pieces or paintings. But about two thousands years ago, it was used in formal writing and government documents but not just artworks. (It was formalized by the first great empire of China.)

(Ha, I am a native Chinese speaker and I don't know much about Japanese language. I hope my answer can help you. Just tell me if I can bring you more infos.)

What is the proper term for the use of archaic kanji?

2 Answers2