Eighty-Five Years of Garyukai: A Family and Its Circle, Carried by Ink

Garyukai (書道研究 臥龍会) is a Japanese calligraphy society based in Utsunomiya, Tochigi. Since its founding in 1940 it has published the monthly calligraphy journal Garyu without missing a single issue, and has spread its chapters across Japan. As a research society specialising in the ancient seal and clerical scripts, it has sustained the culture of calligraphy for eighty-five years. This is its story, traced from the founder.

On 11 February 1940, in the city of Utsunomiya, a calligraphy journal was born. Its founder was Tōka Higano, the first head of Garyukai, then thirty-six years old. For eighty-five years since, Garyukai has walked alongside ink. This is the story of one family, and of the many who stood beside it.

1940: the monthly Garyu, born in Utsunomiya

At the time, Tōka served as an official of the Ministry of Communications at the Utsunomiya post office. Alongside his public duties, together with like-minded companions, he launched the monthly calligraphy journal Garyu. Across the whole country, it is said, there were almost no cases of someone founding a journal of such standing in their mid-thirties.

The name Garyu means a reclining dragon, one that has not yet risen into the sky. In that figure, gathering its strength and biding its time, is mirrored the spirit of facing the brush. The title lettering on the cover has passed through different hands across the eras, and remains to this day the face of the journal.

The one who carried the ink: Sumi, Tōka's wife

Behind the founding stood Tōka's wife, Sumi. She married at nineteen, some twenty years younger than Tōka. For many years it was her name that appeared as the journal's editor and publisher. There were times when the whole family sent the issues out together, from addressing the envelopes to posting them. In an anniversary film she was introduced as "the spiritual pillar of Garyukai" — a quiet, yet certain, presence.

The Tochigi Prefectural Calligraphy Federation, and Garyukai

In 1947, not long after the war, the calligraphers of Tochigi came together and founded the Tochigi Prefectural Calligraphy Federation. The preparatory meeting that led to its founding was held at none other than the Garyukai headquarters. Tōka served as the federation's first vice-president, taking part in laying the foundations that would draw the prefecture's calligraphy world together.

To look beyond the bounds of a single society, toward the flourishing of the whole region — that outlook would in time feed the growth of Garyukai itself. Calligraphy is a personal art, and at the same time something that binds person to person, place to place. Perhaps Tōka understood this from early on.

Through the fires of war, never missing an issue

The journal was founded in the midst of war. Paper was hard to secure, and even its thickness was a daily struggle. With materials and hands alike in short supply, to keep a journal in print was no ordinary feat. And yet Garyu continued, without a single break, from its very first issue — through the war and through the turmoil that followed. Few competitive calligraphy monthlies anywhere have been published so long without missing an issue; it has now passed its eighteen-hundredth.

Postwar revival, and the spread across Japan

After the war, anything bearing the name of a "way" (dō) was set aside for a time — judo, kendo, and calligraphy among them. Seeing the first signs of calligraphy's return a few years later, Tōka moved quickly to prepare copybooks for children. Grade by grade — first, second, third year of primary school — those copybooks reached schools through their extracurricular programmes, and Garyu spread from classroom to classroom.

In the Tōhoku region especially, many chapters were born. The ties formed across the country through the Ministry of Communications, it is said, became their foundation; from Aomori down to Fukushima, circles of ink spread through the towns of the snow country. In time Garyukai grew into one of the largest calligraphy societies in Tochigi, with some 130 chapters and around 2,000 members across Japan.

The large Garyu exhibition, held every ten years. And the seki-sho contests, in which children formed teams of five and competed writing on the spot, all at once, brush in hand. Each of these community-rooted events raised generation after generation of writers and widened the reach of the brush.

To the second generation, and the third

In 1961, the second-generation head, Hiroshi Higano, returned to Utsunomiya and took over the society. He carried the journal's editing and publishing, and marked the 50th, 60th, 70th and 80th anniversaries each with a major exhibition. In 2020 the journal was substantially renewed, and in 2024 Garyukai reached its 85th year.

The society is now led by the third generation, Taku Higano. A specialist in the ancient seal and clerical scripts, he pursues his own work as an artist while opening new settings for calligraphy, for companies and overseas. Counting from the founder, three generations: the path of this house of ink continues unbroken.

From penmanship toward calligraphy as art

In the conversations marking eighty-five years, what the society looks toward is the future. In an age when fewer people write by hand and computers and tablets are the norm, what must be passed on is not technique alone. Where characters came from, how they were formed — that understanding, too, must be handed to the next generation. Beyond mere orderly penmanship, toward calligraphy as each person's own expression.

Those it reaches are changing, too: people enjoying the later chapters of life alongside ink; and people from beyond the kanji cultural sphere, drawn to the characters of Japan. The ways it reaches them are shifting as well, little by little, from the printed page toward the digital.

What changes, and what does not — holding both, Garyukai will go on, steadily and patiently, walking alongside ink.