Katosho (English spelling)

Japanese: 科斗書 - かとしょ（英語表記）Kē dŏu shū

A fanciful style of writing in ancient China. Also called Ke Dou Wen or Ke Dou Seal. This was the style of writing when Cangjie first created Chinese characters. Because there were no brushes or inks, he wrote characters on a bamboo pole dipped in lacquer. The characters had a thick head and a thin tail, resembling a tadpole, so it was named Ke Dou. It is said that the ancient texts found by destroying Lu Bi (the wall of Confucius' former residence) in the Western Han Dynasty and the Jiu Zhongshu (pile-shaped mounded tomb) unearthed in the Western Jin Dynasty were written in this style, but based on current knowledge of the history of ancient writing, it is unlikely that the characters were particularly similar to Ke Dou, and it is likely that people at the time used this name to refer to difficult ancient characters in general.

Source: Heibonsha World Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition Information

Japanese:

中国古代の空想的な字体の文字。科斗文，科斗篆（てん）ともいう。蒼頡（そうけつ）がはじめて漢字を作ったときの字体がこれで，まだ筆と墨とがなかったため，竹挺(たけべら)に漆をつけて文字を書いたが，その字体は頭が太く尾は細くなって科斗(おたまじゃくし)に似ていたのでこの名がつけられたとされる。前漢時代に魯壁(孔子の旧宅の壁)をこわして得た古文経書や，西晋時代に出土した汲冢（きゆうちよう）書がこの字体で書かれていたとされるが，現在の古文字史の知識からすれば，その文字が特に科斗と似ていたとは考えられず，当時の人々が難解な古代文字を広くこの名で呼んだものであろう。

出典　株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典第２版について　情報

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