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Chris, sorry, still no conclusions. I am maybe 75% convinced that it's 唱月 ("chanting moon", probably pronounced "Shōgetsu", "Shōgatsu", or maybe "Shōgwatsu". Check out these different ways to write 唱:
I see the bottom 日 on the right of your 唱 as a sort of cross between top-middle and bottom-left. (The top 日 is even more stylized.) Here is a 帽 (bō, "hat") that kind of shows the same idea, although the bottom-right of 帽 is 目, not 日 (sometimes 月 in variant letterforms, though):
And here are a couple of 月s that sort of show how you get to yours in cursive:
Bonus! One final possibility for Brian: 鳥, chō, "bird".
I guess this is a good example of the affinity between calligraphy and shakuhachi in terms of being process-oriented. Just as you can get the same note a lot of different ways playing the flute, with listeners not necessarily able to figure out your exact technique, that curl inside the bottom part is indisputably there, might be a cross-bar on a 日, it might be the two middle strokes of 勿, it might be the "feet" on 鳥, or it might even be meaningless decoration. Where the artist is coming from and what they meant by the character, these things are also unavailable to us. It is as though we are listening to a scratchy old sample of a few shakuhachi notes by an unknown player and trying to figure out what piece they are from and what ryu the player might be.
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Wow. Thank you for that Matt. "Chanting Moon" would be a pretty good description of the voice of the flute: low, throaty, smooth, subtle.
I like the idea of "bird" for Brian's flute ... although that would be one big 3.2 bird.
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Matt, thanks for the reference to the Tokyo University data base. It's something very useful. I used to have a Yattai Jiten which showed the change of kanji through 8 forms starting with the oldest form in china through to the most modern form used in Japan today. I lost the book some where along the way. If anyone knows a reference where I can get one, please let me know.
Does anyone have very old friends or relatives in Japan they can ask about the character? I used to have a friend in Japan that was born in the 1890s who, of course, is no longer here, but she was an exceptional calligrapher. Interestingly, she was hired by a big sake brewing company after WW2 to write kanji for their bottle labels and she also used a kanji typewriter that had several tiers of keys that spread out around here like an organ but from her right to left side! What a nightmare.
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Now that I'm back in Japan I asked a couple of Japanese who would know well about this kanji.....and was told, definitely 昌 masa, not 易. My apologies for being stubbornly wrongheaded, I'll be more circumspect about such matters in the future!
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Could it be "the artist formerly known as Prince"?
;-}
It is definitely carved. I have a 2.3 with a carved "hanko" as well. As I try to jokingly point out, though, it might not be a character at all, but rather a design.
Toby
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