All Kanji (Sousho-tai)

All Kanji (Sousho-tai)

Sousho-tai(cursive script), flowing and powerful writing style

Here, explain Sousho-tai, one of writing style of Kanji. The Sousho-tai was first introduced as Tensho-tai in the era of Qin, the first united dynasty in China by unifying the different writing styles regionally used in the country. The Tensho-tai then was simplified to Reisho-tai, which was further simplified and modified to get to the Sousho-tai. It has been simplified so many times for many years, so that it might be difficult to understand for those who are not so familiar with Sousho-tai. Therefore, it is not used commonly in our daily life. The word “Sou” of Sousho-tai has a meaning of grass implying freedoms or speeds, so that it plays a role as an artistic quality to show fluid and dynamic beauties rather than just delivering information by using those characters. This is the major roll of the Sousho-tai in the present day. The Sousho-tai creates the  artistic beauty of the characters by following as the brush goes freely, This is the reason why the Sousho-tai is the best to express the artistic beauty of the characters. There is another writing style called as “Gyousho-tai (semi-cursive script) which is very similar to the Sousho-tai with the flowing beauty and convenience. Because these two styles are similar each other, they are often mixed up. The Gyousho-tai uses more character-to-character connections than Sousho-tai, so that the sentence written by Gyousho-tai looks like chain connection of the single line. The Gyousho-tai is more flowing than Sousho-tai. Yet, it keeps its elegance and artistic aspect for each character which are the l points to be emphasized.