Koichi Calligraphy

Hong Yi's calligraphy is divided into three parts including letters, scriptures and Xie Jian in this paper to discuss. The concept Xie Jian means the works that especially written as calligraphy.Hong Yi had left more than two hundred letters after his perish, spanning from when he was seventeen years old to his death when his was sixty three years old. They constituted a complete specimen of his daily writing. These letters were sometimes only written with the data of dates and months but without years, so the question of when they were writing can be figured out only by considering the content of the letter and some relevant information. Most of letters have enough evidence to make sure their exact period in which they were writing. And a few letters can only be sure of its roughly writing time.After ranking the letters in chronological way, we can choose some letters as typical ones which are representative in certain period in style, ways of writing and structure of words. By doing so we can chase the trace that how HongYi changed his ways of writing and structure of words. And it would make it clear that letters were different form calligraphy works, this comparison and analysis would let us see what reason makes the differences.The year when HongYi decide to become a monk a great change had happened in the structrure of word in his calligraphy. As a monk, HongYi had written many scriptures. If searching these scriptures according chronological order, we find that the desire of writing neat and orderly had constantly made HongYi change his writing skills that he learned form inscription previously. And finally he had achieved the state of free writing. What can be concluded is that the pursuit in the writing of scriptures was the leading factor in the evolution of his calligraphy process, and this again demonstrated that became a monk had a great influence on HongYi's calligraphy.Considering that calligraphy may not be helpful for a buddhist self training, buddhism is always vigilant to calligraphy, but HongYi view calligraphy as a tool to benefit others, in this way his calligraphy always seems reverent and respectful, and he keep on writing neatly and orderly, and finally sometimes he could reach a ideal state of writing, in which he can say:"my writing is dharma."There is always tension between buddhism and calligraphy that cannot be eradicated. But through hard efforts, HongYi have made his way out of this dilemma and keep both tensions in balance. And HongYi have finally created a unique style of calligraphy, contributing great accomplishment to the history of calligraphy.