 |
|
|
 |
| Cursive writing is called soshoin Japanese; it literally means "grass script," and was invented as an informal, simplified way of writing complex Chinese characters. Sosho is fast to write and elegant to look at, but often hard to read, because the individual strokes of the kanji get connected in a flowing line. The sosho style of writing kanji gave rise to the smooth forms of Japanese hiragana. |
 |
| The black and white images on this page are excerpts from 18th- and 19th-century Japanese sosho. At the bottom right is a 10th-century example. |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|