12. Pottery and Calligraphy

After the war, back in Sado, Shodo became deeply involved in the making and teaching of Mano pottery. Pottery, unlike metal, is a world in which one feels the softness of clay, and its breath. For Shodo, who had pursued precise lines in metal all his life, the honest changes of form that clay produces may have been another place to look at forming itself anew. Shodo also devoted himself to calligraphy and painting. In his unhesitating, pure lines, a spirit seems to dwell in each and every stroke. The purity of the curves seen in his works, and the expression of lines that hold both tension and release — in them, this sense of line surely lives on.