At the age of six the child is sent to school and taught to write with a brush the phonetic signs Japanese (forty-seven in number) which constitute the Japanese syllabary. These signs represent the forty-seven pure sounds of the Japanese language and are used for writing. They are known as _katakana_ and are simplified Chinese characters, consisting of two or three strokes each. With them any word in Japanese can be written. It takes a year for a child to learn all these signs and to write them from memory, but they are an excellent training for both the eye and the hand.
His next step in education is to learn to write these same sounds in a different script, called _hiragana._ These characters are cursive or rounded in form, while the _katakana_ are more or less square. The _hiragana_ are more graceful and can be written more rapidly, but they are more complicated.
From daily practice considerable training in the use of the brush and the free movement of the right arm and wrist is secured, and the eye is taught insensibly the many differences between the square and the cursive form. Before the child is eight years old he has become quite skilful in writing with the brush both kinds of _kana._
He is next taught the easier Chinese characters,—Chinese KANJI and ideographs. These are most ingeniously constructed and are of great importance in the further training of the eye and hand.
So greatly do these wonderfully conceived written forms appeal to the artistic sense that a taste for them thus early acquired leads many a Japanese scholar to devote his entire life to their study and cultivation. Such writers become professionals and are called SHOKA. Probably the most renowned in all China was Ogishi. Japan has produced many such famous men, but none greater than Iwaya Ichi Roku, who has left an immortal name.
From what has been said about writing with the brush, it will be understood how the youth who may determine to follow art as a career is already well prepared for rapid strides therein. His hand and arm have acquired great freedom of movement. His eye has been trained to observe the varying lines and intricacies of the strokes and characters, and his sentiments of balance, of proportion, of accent and of stroke order, have been insensibly developed according to subtle principles, all aiming at artistic results.