ー  IN 1945, NANKOKU HIDAI WROTE THE FIRST ABSTRACT WORK IN THE HISTORY OF CALLIGRAPHY . HIS ART OF LINE IMPACTED ON THE WORLD. HIS WORKS WERE COLLECTED BY SUCH PUBLIC MUSEUM AS MOMA. THIS SITE INTRODUCES THE WHOLE ACTIVITY OF NANKOKU.  ー

 In 1964, in early November, Nankoku visited the United States for the third time. 

He flied to Richmond, Indiana. He came there for lectures, classes, and performances at Earlham College in Richmond. After his lecture in Richmond, he headed for Washington D. C. to see the exhibition of "Contemporary Japanese Painting" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.  In Washington, Nankoku gave an interview to The Washington Post’s reporter.  He proclaimed his own Art of Line with confidence and conviction. The following is the article.

“In the Orient,” Hidai explained, “calligraphy --- the painting of characters ---is the highest art in the fine arts field. The tradition of linear expression is 4000years old, and each period reveals something about the people’s mind at that time---vigor, degeneracy, grace or whatever.

“The strokes of the brush express our inner being, our true selves. Western calligraphy is decorative, a kind of design; ours is an art form in which the inner man is revealed.

“Oriental calligraphy is more beautiful writing; it is valued not for the meaning of the character, but the meaning of the lines in which it is drawn.”

Hidai has made the calligraphic art even more revealing of the inner man by making abstractions of the traditional Chinese characters.

“Abstract calligraphy is an extension of the Oriental desire to express the inner being in line. The emphasis is inward, rather than outward. When people say of one of my works, ‘This is beautiful,’ it doesn’t mean anything to me, It must say ‘Hidai.’”