One stroke - One stroke

One of the brush techniques of oriental painting, it is a picture drawn in one stroke without connecting the ink. According to Zhang Yanyuan's "Records of Famous Paintings of All Ages" of the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Zhi of the Later Han Dynasty studied cursive script and made modifications based on it. The style of his calligraphy is connected, and even when the lines change, they are written in one stroke and are not broken, so it is said to have come to be known as one-stroke calligraphy. Later, Lu Tanwei of the Liu Song Dynasty (Six Dynasties period) incorporated common points between calligraphy and painting to create one-stroke painting. His paintings are continuous and uninterrupted, with a smooth beauty, and were praised as innovative in his time. It is unclear when this one-stroke painting was brought to Japan, but the oldest is a painting of sacred animals, swallows, clouds, etc., using a flying white body on picture paper handed down in the Shosoin Repository. In the early modern period, Zen monks and literati painters began to soak their brushes in plenty of ink and paint people and other subjects in one go, and this came to be called one-stroke painting.

[Shinichi Nagai]

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

東洋画の筆法の一つで、墨を継がずに一筆で描く絵のこと。唐の張彦遠(ちょうげんえん)の『歴代名画記』によると、後漢(ごかん)の張芝(ちょうし)は草書を学び、それに基づいて変化を加え、その書の体勢は、気脈がつながり、行が変わっても一筆で書き、断(き)れていないので、世間で一筆書と称したといわれる。その後、劉宋(りゅうそう)（六朝(りくちょう)時代）の陸探微(りくたんび)は書と画と共通した点を取り入れ一筆画を創造した。その絵は連綿として切れ目がなく、滑らかな美しさをもち、同時代に斬新(ざんしん)なものとして評価を得た。この一筆画がいつごろ日本にもたらされたか不明であるが、正倉院に伝わる絵紙(えがみ)に飛白体(ひはくたい)をもって霊獣、燕(つばめ)、雲などを描いたものがもっとも古い。近世になって禅僧や文人画家の間で、筆にたっぷりと墨を含ませ、一気に人物などを描くことが行われ、これを一筆画とよぶようになった。

［永井信一］

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